MIMIC-III diagnosis column

Question

I understand the fact that a diagnosis column as provided in the admissions table is difficult, almost impossible to structure. It is necessary however to specify the position of this diagnostic description. Because it is located in the table admissions and this table only relates to the hospital admission (HADM_ID), one could associate with the diagnosis of hospital admission. However, the website mentions :

The DIAGNOSIS column provides the admitting diagnosis for the patient. The diagnosis does not use a systematic ontology: as of MIMIC-III v1.0 there are 15,693 distinct diagnoses for 58,976 patients. The diagnoses can be very informative (e.g. chronic kidney failure) or quite vague (e.g. weakness).

This suggests that distinct diagnosis are used related to ICU admissions (58,976). Even in an unstructured way, this diagnosis column is informative but it should be defined more clearly (diagnosis for ICU admission or hospital admission) and 58,976 ICU admission in stead of patients, right?

Answer 1

That's a typo in the documentation page. The DIAGNOSIS column in the ADMISSIONS table is the diagnosis on hospital admission. It should read 58,976 admissions. It has been corrected now, and reads:

The DIAGNOSIS column provides a free text diagnosis for the patient on hospital admission. The diagnosis does not use a systematic ontology: as of MIMIC-III v1.0 there are 15,693 distinct diagnoses for 58,976 admissions. The diagnoses can be very informative (e.g. chronic kidney failure) or quite vague (e.g. weakness). Coded diagnoses for hospital admissions can be found in the DIAGNOSES_ICD table.

If you spot any issues with the MIMIC-III website documentation, I would recommend posting it on the associated GitHub repository issues: https://github.com/MIT-LCP/mimic-website/issues