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Change to Effective Time for International Edition Starting 1 September 2023

After consultation with the community, SNOMED International has changed the date of the effective time for the International Edition from the last day of each month, to the first of each month.  

The effective time for the “January” edition will be 1st January.

The effective time for the “July” edition will be 1st July. 

The July 2023 International Edition was the last to be published with effective time of the last day of the month.

Further details about this change can be found in the Q&A blog post. 

Inactivation of 9258009|Gravid uterus structure (body structure)|

This concept will be inactivated, content that is modeled with this concept will be remodeled with a site of 35039007|Uterine structure (body structure)| along with occurrence <<307159006|Pregnancy time period (qualifier value)|.  

The domain of 246454002 |Occurrence (attribute)| has been extended in the October 2023 release to include << 71388002 |Procedure (procedure)| to support these content changes. Content areas that will be updated include 386811000|Fetal procedure (procedure)| and 386637004|Obstetric procedure (procedure)|.

Inactivation of Concepts Specified Male/Female in Descriptions

Subtypes of 67770001 |Male mammary gland structure (body structure)| and 91532001 |Female mammary gland structure (body structure)| and their associated disorder and specimen concepts.  Further information is available here (Confluence log in required).

Update for Concepts Using 'Caused by'

Clinical finding concepts containing "Caused by" in their FSN will be reviewed and will be updated (if applicable) according to the editorial guidelines related to causation here. 

There is one area where work is still in progress:  

• Clinical finding caused by radiation.

Editing work commencing Q4 2023 (<<168537006|Plain radiography (procedure)|).

First phase of content updates planned for promotion Q1 2024.

Updates to the Inactivation Reason and Historical Association for 'On Examination' and 'Complaining of' Inactive Content

Many of the 'on examination' and 'complaining of' concepts were previously inactivated with the inactivation reason of |Moved elsewhere| with a historical association value |Extension Namespace 1000000|.

This content will be updated with an inactivation reason of |Non-conformance to editorial policy| and a historical association of |Alternative| to a suitable international concept. 

Ethnic/Racial Group Social Context Content Inactivation

The subtypes of 372148003 |Ethnic group (ethnic group)| and 415229000 |Racial group (racial group)| will be inactivated as they are out of scope for the International Edition.  A briefing note is available here.

Patient/Subject concepts in the Clinical finding and Procedure Hierarchies

Concepts in the Clinical finding and Procedure hierarchies that contain the explicit context of patient or subject will be inactivated and replaced with concepts without this explicit context. For further information please see briefing note.

The Senior Management Team (SMT) recently agreed on a proposed solution to resolve the duplication between the evaluation procedure and observable entity hierarchies. The resolution includes moving the majority of the evaluation procedures to the observable entity hierarchy while retaining the original concept id during the move.

The semantic tag will be updated from evaluation procedure to observable entity, and updates in terming and modeling to align with the observable entity model are expected. This move will allow for concepts of multiple granularities to be classified in a single hierarchy.

Non-defining annotations for “order only,” “observation only,” or “both order and observation” may be added to the concepts to assist with certain use cases. Note that some content areas of evaluation procedures such as panels and procedure methods will not be addressed at this time.

A projected timeline of changes will be developed and shared with the community. Editorial and implementation guidance will be provided with this project. Please see the briefing note for further information.

To be determined

Inactivation of 277132007|Therapeutic procedure (procedure)

The concept 277132007 |Therapeutic procedure (procedure) will be inactivated with the inactivation reason of Outdated and a replacement association target of 71388002 |Procedure (procedure)|. The nearly 2000 descendants will be reviewed as to the appropriateness of either the Has intent (attribute) of Therapeutic intent, or a Method (attribute) of Therapy - action.

For further information please see briefing note.

Update 1st May 20204 Release

The immediate subtypes of <277132007 |Therapeutic procedure (procedure)|, excluding <<416608005 |Drug therapy (procedure)|, will be reviewed for appropriate presence or absence of the Has intent (attribute) according to the Editorial Guide for the 1 May release.   

A potential concept model for 416608005 |Drug therapy (procedure)| and for 276239002 |Therapy (regime/therapy)| requires further consultation. 277132007 |Therapeutic procedure (procedure)| will remain active until this work has been undertaken. 

From May 2024

International Release

Urinary Bladder

Following feedback from translation, descriptions for concepts that contain the word 'bladder' and the site of 89837001|Urinary bladder structure (body structure)| will be updated to include 'urinary' in the FSN and PT, for example:

126885006|Neoplasm of bladder (disorder)

will be updated to

126885006|Neoplasm of urinary bladder (disorder).

Update for 73632009 |Laparoscopy (procedure)| and Subtypes 

There will be a bulk update to align 73632009 |Laparoscopy (procedure)| and subtypes with the template here: https://confluence.ihtsdotools.org/display/SCTEMPLATES/Laparoscopy+%28procedure%29+-+Draft

These changes include the addition of INCISION ROLE GROUP and INSPECTION ROLE GROUP for all Laparoscopic procedures. 

International Unit in Descriptions for Clinical Drugs

'International Unit' as a description is arbitrary and to be understood each product requires reference to a particular bioefficacy specification for that entity. Therefore, 'international' is not meaningful or comparable as a description at Clinical Drug level. International unit will be represented as 'unit' in Clinical Drug descriptions and 20 concepts will have their descriptions changed to 'unit'  Note: abbreviations will not be used. Editorial Guidance has been drafted.

Inactivation of  “RAST” and “RAST test” from subtypes of 104380004 |Allergen specific antibody measurement (procedure)|

Based on a proposal by the Allergies and Hypersensitivities CRG, descriptions containing “RAST” and “RAST test” will be inactivated from the concepts in this sub-hierarchy as they are not considered real synonyms.

Immunoassays for immunoglobulin specific to an allergen of interest are widely used in the diagnosis of allergic disease. These tests are often incorrectly referred to collectively as "radioallergosorbent tests" ("RAST") because they were the earliest immunoassays to be used extensively.