The accessory file LOINC Names Effective Date History was introduced with LOINC version 2.83 (August 2026) to provide a history of LOINC name changes. This file is included in the LOINC download file within the AccessoryFiles directory under the name LoincNamesEffectiveDateHistory. See the included ReadMe text file for technical details regarding the CSV file.
The purpose of this file is to provide visibility of name changes across the lifetime of a LOINC term’s existence. This information may be helpful in validating changes across versions.
The file includes name history for all LOINC codes, regardless of status, from version 2.68 to current. There will be rows with a name effective version prior to 2.68 (and its release on 2020-06-17). These entries indicate no change in the given name since the term’s introduction. The earliest effective version for names is 2.18 (2006-12-01).
The following name types are currently tracked:
- Long Common Name (field name
LONG_COMMON_NAME) - Fully-Specified Name (the concatenation of the six primary LOINC Parts separated by colon characters)
- Short Name (field name
SHORTNAME) - Display Name (field name
DisplayName) - Consumer Name (field name
CONSUMER_NAME)
Note that the Consumer Name field carries an ALPHA maturity.