Purpose

There are various reasons for inactivating descriptions in an extension, including:

• The description does not represent the same meaning as the fully specified name (FSN) of the concept
• The description is no longer current, useful, appropriate or acceptable
• The description fails to comply with the current editorial guidance. For more information, please refer to Terming and Naming Conventions in the Editorial Guide.
• The description contains a technical error, such as a typographic error

Principles

Excluding Extension Descriptions

Descriptions created in an extension can be inactivated if necessary. This is done by inactivating both the description itself and the associated member(s) of the relevant language reference set(s). It is recommended that the reason for inactivation is specified in the Description Inactivation Reference Set.

Excluding International Descriptions

Descriptions which belong to the International Edition (or another module on which the extension depends) should not be inactivated in the extension. If there is a requirement to remove international descriptions from an extension, this should be accomplished by excluding the given description identifiers from the relevant language reference set(s). Two possible approaches for this are described below.

Copy and Adapt Language Reference Set

This approach involves creating a copy of one of the language reference sets distributed with the International Edition, and adding or removing members as required. All members of the new language reference set must be assigned to a module in the extension. When using this approach, the extension producer is responsible for maintaining the new language reference set. If the extension producer wants their new language reference set to incorporate future changes made to the international language reference set, they are responsible for maintaining these changes. 

Adopt and Adapt Language Reference Set

An extension producer may choose not to create a new copy of an international language reference set. Instead, they may use the international language reference set directly, and exclude any members of this reference set by inactivating the relevant members in their extension module. To exclude a description from an international language reference set, a new version of the reference set member is created with the following attributes:

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Please note that if a new version of the reference set member is published in the International Edition, this will become the current version of that member. It may, therefore be necessary to create a new inactive version in the extension with a more recent effectiveTime.

Process

This table describes the process of excluding descriptions in an extension.

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