Nosology
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nosology (in Greek Nosos = Disease) is a branch of medicine that deals with classification of diseases.
Diseases can be classified by etiology (cause), pathogenesis (mechanism in which the agent causes disease), or by symptom. Alternatively, diseases can be classified according to the organ system they involve, but this is often complicated as many diseases affect multiple organs.
One of the main problems with nosologies is that diseases often cannot be defined and classified clearly especially when pathogenesis or causality is not known. So, diagnostic terms often are in fact only symptoms or sets of symptoms (syndromes).
Some of the very earliest efforts in developing a classification of disease started with the eminent taxonomist Carolus Linnaeus and Francois Boissier de Sauvages in the 1700's, although the work of Thomas Sydenham in the late 1600's might be considered a nosology as well. Emil Kraepelin and then Jacques Bertillon developed their own nosologies in the 1800's, with Bertillon's work classifying causes of death being the precursor of the modern medical billing code system, ICD. The early work grouped diseases by their symptoms, although modern systems tend to focus on grouping diseases by shared anatomy and etiology, such as SNOMED.
[edit] See also
- Differential diagnosis
- International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems
- Medical classification
- Pathology
[edit] External links
- Gordon L. Snider, Nosology for Our Day Its Application to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine Vol 167. pp. 678-683, (2003). fulltext
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