A formal terminological approach to the translation of professional medical texts: Medical classification rubrics as a case study

Medical classification systems are used for a variety of applications in medicine and medical informatics such as the statistical analysis of diseases and therapeutic actions. Medical coding is the process of transforming terminological descriptions of medical diagnoses and procedures described in surgical reports into numerical codes. Our paper focuses on the procedure volume of the ICD-9-CM classification which is published in English and translated in different languages. In this classification surgical procedures are rendered by numerical codes. Each code, in turn, is associated with a so-called rubric, i.e. a compact description of the code’s meaning in natural language. As rubrics are produced from and for medical professionals, the correct interpretation presupposes consolidated domain knowledge. In practice, however, it shows that rubrics frequently are misinterpreted. One of the main reasons is that many classification users such as professional coders do not dispose of the medical background knowledge required for the correct reading of rubrics. Incorrectly interpreted rubrics inevitably imply that also codes incorrectly will be assigned which has serious consequences for the statistical evaluation of codes. We therefore developed a terminological frame-based representation model which exposes the conceptual structure of rubrics in a structured and unambiguous way. We illustrate by means of corpus samples how the computer implementation of the proposed model supports in an efficient way the correct reading, translation and generation of classification rubrics in different languages.

ISBN:978-7-88718-261-6

Jaar van publicatie:2008

Toegankelijkheid:Open