DateJuly 31, 2019
InfoRMS

SR-164

AccessTerminology Gateway
Code SystemLOINC
Code System Version2.66
Release TypeMaintenance

The pan-Canadian LOINC Observation Code Database (pCLOCD) standard is published as an Excel file that contains ten tabs. The four tabs that were edited in this release include Infoway Terms of Use, LOINC® Copyright, Nomenclature and the Change Log. This release contains the June 2019 update (2.66) from the Regenstrief Institute Inc. and any interim changes from the previously published release, which are described below. 

 

1. There are a total of 38,251 records this release, up from 38,246 in the previously released version. This version incorporates all of the applicable LOINC changes in version 2.66 as published by Regenstrief in June 2019.

2. 37,352 records have been translated to French, up from 37,347 in the last version. Terms that are marked ‘Review Draft’ should be reviewed before they are used as the translation has not been previously published. Terms that are marked as ‘Complete’ have been previously published. 

3. 163 records were modified in English for this release and are marked as R05.10.00_2.66

a. 69 records are of the change type Major for English changes.

b. 15 records are of the change type Minor for English changes..

c. 48 records are of the change type Name for English changes.

d. 4 corrections were made to Viewer Names.

e. 22 records have been changed to Inactive and marked as Deprecated.

4. 5 new records were added for the English version.

5. 156 records were modified in French for this release and are marked as R05.10.00_2.66

a. 64 records are of the change type Major for the French translation.

b.  8 records are of the change type Minor for the French translation.

c. 50 records are of the change type Name for the French translation.

d.  7 corrections were made to Viewer Names.

e. 22 records have been changed to Inactive and marked as Deprecated.

6. 5 new records were added for the French version.

7. Both languages contain a number of codes that only have changes in the other language; those are identified as ‘No Change’.

Of specific interest in this release , current implementers may want to review these changes:

  • 612 Term edits were not marked as R05.10.00_266. These edits were based on the introduction of tall man lettering for drugs based on recommendations from the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, see list of LOINC Terms with Tall Man Lettering to identify the changes.
  • Updated 30 Microbiology terms containing Clostridium to Clostridioides in Component parts to align with current nomenclature.
  • Updated Scale for 42 terms from OrdQn to Ord because genotyping does not produce quantitative susceptibility results.
  • Updated older molecular pathology terms with Property 'Prid' to 'Find', to align with the current LOINC model for representing information collections such as molecular pathology test reports.
  • Updated Method for Troponin T.cardiac [Mass/volume] in Serum or Plasma by High sensitivity method 67151-1 from Detection limit <= 5 ng/L to High sensitivity.
  • Deprecated 22 limited use LABORDER terms. These terms were originally created for Canada Health Infoway, but are no longer in use and cause confusion for mappers.
  • Replaced all terms with typographic ligature, which is the attachment of two letters such as 'œ' and 'æ', with the separation of characters to avoid the systems interpreting these characters as unicode.

KNOWN ISSUES regarding pCLOCD-20190731 (Microsoft Excel file)

  1. A cautionary note about changing versions with Microsoft Excel, Infoway is now using the most current version as part of our Office 365 suite of products. We have found with this version that the LOINC/pCLOCD Code field in our new release pCLOCD-20190131 is not sorting numerically when using the Sort & Filter option on the field. To sort the LOINC/pCLOCD field numerically:
      • Insert an adjacent column
      • Enter the formula =SUBSTITUTE(A2,”-“,”.”) and apply the formula throughout the entire column
      • Select Sort A to Z function on this new column, this should numerically sort the entire pCLOCD by the pCLOCD/LOINC Codes.
      • Delete the inserted column with the formulas once you no longer need it.
  2. POTENTIAL ISSUES with pan-CANADIAN NAME in ENGLISH and FRENCH

The pan-Canadian Name field in English and French is generated from a formula that concatenates the pan-Canadian Component name (EN or FR) with one or more of the LOINC attributes of System, Time, Method or Property. The formula first looks up the attribute in the LOINC Element Substitution Table and will present the substitution attribute if the LOINC version is abbreviated or contains unnecessary punctuation (for example, BldA will display as Arterial Blood). With the authoring of our new release pCLOCD-20190131 we found periodic errors in the formula’s ability to make the substitution from the table. We have done our best to find and correct any errors but would like to caution our users to report any unusual displays in the pan-Canadian Name in English or French using InfoRMS. We are working on a long term solution to the problem with the formula, but for this release, it was a manual fix.