# sufficiently defined concept

## sufficiently defined concept

A concept with one or more sufficient definitions.

#### Notes

* A SNOMED CT concept is expressed in a human-readable form by its fully specified name (FSN).
* A *sufficiently defined concept* has at least one sufficient definition that distinguishes it from any concepts or expressions that are neither equivalent to, nor subtypes of, the defined concept.

**Examples**

* The concept [74400008 | appendicitis (disorder)|](http://snomed.info/id/74400008) is *sufficiently defined* by the following definition because any concept for which these defining relationships are true, is either the disorder *appendicitis* or a subtype of *appendicitis*.

[74400008 |appendicitis (disorder)|](http://snomed.info/id/74400008)\
\=== [18526009 |disorder of appendix|](http://snomed.info/id/18526009) :\
[116676008 |associated morphology|](http://snomed.info/id/116676008) = [23583003 |inflammation|](http://snomed.info/id/23583003) ,\
[363698007 |finding site|](http://snomed.info/id/363698007) = [66754008 |appendix structure|](http://snomed.info/id/66754008)

#### Change Notices

* Prior to July 2018, SNOMED CT could only support one *sufficient definition* for each concept could not represent the [8801005 | Secondary diabetes mellitus (disorder)|](http://snomed.info/id/8801005) example above. A further limitation, that also prevented formal representation of that example was the stated relationship file was only able to represent necessary conditions.
* Changes introduced in the July 2018 release of the International Edition allow assertions to be represented as axioms in the OWL axiom reference set file. This will allow concepts to be defined by multiple sufficient definitions, some of which may contain assertions that are not necessarily true.
* Following these changes a concept will only be marked as sufficiently defined if it is sufficiently defined by relationships. However, the OWL axioms may provide a sufficient definition that cannot be fully represented as *relationships*.

## Alternatives

* **Fully defined concept**

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