Display Names are concise, clinician-friendly labels for LOINC terms
Beginning with LOINC version 2.64, we began publishing Display Names, which were developed as a prototype for a more “clinician-friendly” set of names compared to the current LOINC Short Name, Long Common Name, and Fully Specified Name. They are created algorithmically from the manually crafted display text for each Part and are generally more concise than the Long Common Name. Currently only LOINC Laboratory terms have Display Names, though we may add Display Names for Clinical terms in the future.
In general, Display Names are unique for a given concept; however, in the case of truly duplicate concepts, the Display Name will be the same. Unlike the Short Name and Long Common Name, the Display Name does not include an indicator that a term is deprecated.
Part Order in Display Names
Display Names follow this general structure for quantitative terms:
Component Challenge Timing Method (System) [Property]
And this general structure for qualitative terms:
Component Challenge Timing Method Property/Scale (System)
For comparison, here is the usual order of Parts and additional text in the Long Common Name for Laboratory terms:
Component Timing [Property] in System by Method --Challenge
TIP More information
Section 9.1.1 "Names" of the LOINC Users' Guide contains more information on LOINC names including the rules used to create Display Names.
The following table illustrates the differences between Display Names and Long Common Names for several LOINC terms. Display Names are included on each LOINC Details page and listed within search results on RELMA and search.loinc.org.
| LOINC | Display Name | Long Common Name |
|---|---|---|
| 75002-6 | Kiwi+Pineapple+Banana+Mango IgE Multidisk Qn (S) | Food Allergen Mix 50 (Kiwi+Pineapple+Banana+Mango) IgE Ab [Units/volume] in Serum by Multidisk |
| 1494-4 | Glucose 1.5 Hr post 100 g glucose PO [Mass/Vol] | Glucose [Mass/volume] in Serum or Plasma --1.5 hours post 100 g glucose PO |
| 41150-4 | HSV 1+2 IgM Ql (CSF) | Herpes simplex virus 1+2 IgM Ab [Presence] in Cerebral spinal fluid |
| 29946-1 | Albumin Elph Ql (24H U) | Albumin [Presence] in 24 hour Urine by Electrophoresis |
| 23952-5 | Asialoganglioside GM1 IgM IA (CSF) [Titer] | Asialoganglioside GM1 IgM Ab [Titer] in Cerebral spinal fluid by Immunoassay |
| 52984-2 | CMV IgG avidity IA [Ratio] | Cytomegalovirus IgG Ab avidity [Ratio] in Serum or Plasma by Immunoassay |
| 40106-7 | aPTT 4 Hr post Unsp challenge Coag (PPP) [Time] | aPTT in Platelet poor plasma by Coagulation assay --4 hours post XXX challenge |
| 3936-2 | Phencyclidine Ql (U) | Phencyclidine [Presence] in Urine |
| 709-6 | Blasts/100 WBC Manual cnt (Bld) | Blasts/100 leukocytes in Blood by Manual count |
API Access
Display Names are not currently available as part of the CodeSystem resource of LOINC's FHIR Terminology Server. We are working to define a property for these.