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Laterality
What is a laterality?
General description
- Laterality is associated with either loci or intervention.
- It descibes the sidedness of the loci or intervention, in relation to the patient's body.
- Lateralities that modify other types of entity will not be annotated.
For every laterality, annotate a modifier relation
For every laterality signal, at least one modifier relation must also be annotated, relating it to the associated locus.
For every laterality, select a value
Each laterality signal that is annotated will be assigned a value from the enumeration: {left, right, bilateral}.
Examples of stock phrases
- There are a limited number of words that may be annotated as a laterality.
- These laterality stock words and phrases include:
- right
- left
- rightmost
- leftmost
- bilateral
- Bilaterality may sometimes be indicated by other words implying involvement of all sides.
- For example,
- "Oedema of both limbs"
- The "both" should be annotated as a laterality, related to the locus "limb".
- There may be others not included in this list.
What is not a laterality?
A laterality will only ever be a signal modifying either a locus or an intervention.
Lateralities in complex terms
- Loci, sub-locations, and laterality are often combined in a complex way. Please use the Locus and sub-location recipe to deal with these.
- Where either a locus or an intervention is qualified with its laterality, the laterality will always be split from the locus and annotated separately.
- Sometimes, complex combinations of loci and lateralities are used to modify each other. The annotation needs to mark the laterality as applying to the main locus, not the sub-locations.
- For example,
- Right lobe of the lower pole of the thyroid
- "Right" should be annotated as a laterality of "thyroid"
- Right upper quadrant of the abdomen
- "Right" should be annotated as a laterality of "abdomen"
- See the guideline on Sub-location for further details.