Lesion

This Editorial Guide is used for Education Purposes Only. It is used in the Authoring Courses and Certifications. It is based on the January 2026 Editorial Guide.

The word lesion can be used to refer to both structural and functional abnormalities. This makes a subtle distinction between the clinical finding and disorder semantic tags. The majority of lesions in SNOMED CT are in the disorder subhierarchy.

Lesion as a disorder

If a concept refers to a lesion that is a structural abnormality, then apply the (disorder) semantic tag, and model with an 116676008 |Associated morphology (attribute)| of << 52988006 | Lesion (morphologic abnormality)| .

If a procedure refers to a lesion that is a structural abnormality, then model with a 405816004 |Procedure morphology (attribute)| of << 52988006 | Lesion (morphologic abnormality)|.

Lesion as a finding

Lesion concepts referencing characteristics of a lesion are subtypes of 300577008 |Finding of lesion (finding)|.

Imaging-related lesion findings remain as finding concepts.

Functional lesions should not be modeled using values from the 52988006 |Lesion (morphologic abnormality)| subhierarchy.

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