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Condition

What is a condition?

Problems

Conditions are typically the sorts of things that some clinicians record in the "problem list" at the start of a patient document. Conditions include:

Normal function

Conditions are not neccesarily pathological. For example, a piece of text may be commenting on some normal function.

Social and general life issues

Conditions may also include social and general life issues, that the writer has considered it important to mention

Psychological problems

Conditions may include psychological problems.

Physical and physiological processes

Conditions may also include processes. This is often associated with a locus.

General terms for problems and diseases

Sometimes, a patient's disease will be referred to as "the disease", or in phrases such as "no disease found". This will be annotated as a mention of the relevant condition entity

Similarly, a condition may be referred to using a general term such as "symptoms", "difficulties", "problems", "abnormality" etc. This will also be annotated.

Other people's conditions (e.g. a relative)

Even if a condition belongs to a person other than the patient, it should still be annotated. It is still a condition. Deciding who it belongs to is a separate process.

Conditions as the findings of examinations

Examinations, as investigations (see below), often have lists of conditions that are related to the examination (by has_finding relationships: see below).

What is not a condition?

Doubts and wonderings

General doubts and wonderings of the clinician will not be annotated as conditions.

Progress, recurrence, change

Statements of the progress of a condition will not be annotated as standing for the condition.

The loss or change of functional conditions should not be annotated.

Results of an investigation

An investigation may find the absence of any condition. This will be marked as a result: see section on Result entity below.

Conditions modified by other words: complex condition terms.

Conditions modified with loci

Conditions are often combined with a locus as a modifier

Loci modified with conditions

As well as loci qualifying conditons, conditions may appear qualifying loci.

Other modifiers: detail of the condition

In additon to loci being added to condition words, many other words are combined to give more detail. These cannot and should not all be annotated, Where the modifier is commonly accepted as part of the condition name, it will retained and annotated with the condition. See the general discussion of entity annotation above, for further explanation of this guideline.

Multiple conditions appearing together

Some phrases give complex combinations of conditions that are associated with, or sub-parts of, each other. Each separate condition should be annotated. There is no need to combine them in any way.