textual definition

textual definition

A narrative text explanation of the meaning of a concept that may exceed the maximum permitted length for a fully specified name.

Notes

• Textual definitions are optional and are only provided for a limited number of concepts, where there is a requirement additional detail.

• Textual definitions are distributed as descriptions with a description type 900000000000550004 | Definition (core metadata concept)|.

• A file that conforms to the standard description file format is used to distribute textual definitions. However, descriptions in this file have a maximum permitted length of 4096 characters.

Example

• One use of textual definitions is to indicate alignment of a SNOMED CT concept with a specific clinical definition of a condition.

  • For example 11530004 | Brittle diabetes mellitus (disorder)| has the following textual definition:

    • 11530004 | Diabetes mellitus in which there are frequent, clinically significant fluctuations in blood glucose levels both above and below levels expected to be achieved by available therapies.|

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