How cancer registries can detect neoplasms in pathology laboratories that code with SNOMED CT terminology? An actual, simple and flexible solution.

Background: Pathology laboratories are one of the main information sources for cancer registries and have traditionally been coded with SNOMED; some of them are migrating to SNOMED CT (SCT). Cancer registries encode topography and morphology of neoplasms by the International Classification of Diseases for Oncology (ICD-O). ICD-O updates morphology with WHO Classification of Tumors (Blue-Books).

Definition of a SNOMED CT pathology subset and microglossary, based on 1.17 million biological samples from the Catalan Pathology Registry.

SNOMED CT terminology is not backed by standard norms of encoding among pathologists. The vast number of concepts ordered in hierarchies and axes, together with the lack of rules of use, complicates the functionality of SNOMED CT for coding, extracting, and analyzing the data. Defining subgroups of SNOMED CT by discipline could increase its functionality.