LOINC Release Notes

This section last updated: 2025-02-26 (4 months ago)

Version 2.79 and 2.80 Hotfix, February 2025

Table of contents:

• Version 2.80 Hotfix
• LOINC table core
• LOINC table
• Answer lists
• Change snapshot
• Consumer names
• Document ontology
• Document ontology OWL
• Groups
• Imaging document codes
• Linguistic variants
• LOINC/IEEE medical device code mapping table
• LOINC/RSNA radiology playbook
• LOINC Universal lab orders value set
• Component Hierarchy By System
• Panels and forms
• Parts
• Updates
• RELMA Changes

Version 2.80 Hotfix

To correct issues introduced in Version 2.79 and add terms accidentally omitted, a Hotfix labeled Version 2.80 was released in February 2025.

All users who have implemented Version 2.79 into their systems are encouraged to upgrade to Version 2.80 as soon as possible. If you have not yet incorporated Version 2.79, you may skip to Version 2.80 without issue. Similarly, RELMA Version 7.13 contains content from LOINC 2.80 which supersedes RELMA 7.12 and LOINC 2.79.

Changes included in the LOINC Version 2.80 Hotfix:

• Added 78 new terms to represent three HOPE assessments
  • 106623-2 Hospice Outcomes and Patient Evaluation (HOPE) Admission v1.0
  • 106625-7 Hospice Outcomes and Patient Evaluation (HOPE) Discharge v1.0
  • 106933-5 Hospice Outcomes and Patient Evaluation (HOPE) Update Visit v1.0
• Four existing Long-Term and Post-Acute Care (LTPAC) assessments were updated, including the addition of 10 new terms
• Corrected two Answer Strings that were inadvertently modified in Version 2.79, LA32-8 and LA33-6

LOINC table core

There were no structural changes to the core table in this release, and no future changes to announce at this time. See the Readme included in the LOINC Table Core download file for information about its current file structure.

See the LOINC table notes below for information on content updates included in this release.

LOINC table

Numbers

New terms and totals by type

Totals by Status

Term Status changes

Edits by change type

Content highlights

• Health related social needs – Standardized six key assessment tools to support our collaboration with the Gravity Project:
  • Intimate Partner Violence-4 (IPV-4)
  • Transportation Security Index (TSI-16, and TSI-6)
  • Three-item Loneliness Scale
  • Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10 & PSS-14)

• We have developed new concepts to standardize information models across multiple healthcare domains, including clinical, financial, and supply chain management. These models encompass:

  • Structural elements for key entities such as patients, providers, and encounters
  • Granular representations of clinical data, including blood pressure, heart rate, wound and pain assessments, and laboratory observations (e.g., potassium, chloride, eGFR)
  Each element and sub-element is assigned a LOINC code, ensuring clarity for implementers. These standardized models facilitate seamless data translation into FHIR, HL7 V2.X, C-CDA, X12, and integration with analytic frameworks such as OMOP.
• As the collaboration between Regenstrief and SNOMED is going forward full throttle, the adjustments on the content in LOINC database resulted in:
  • Revisions to a subset of Identified concepts, the rest will be revised in subsequent releases.
  • Improvement of Parts definitions
  • Cleaning up, eliminating redundancies and reducing duplicates
  • Revisiting Top level (100-200) Laboratory observables
  • Configuring new approach and representation of observables related to panel representation, calculation, property like component, and more.

Key Laboratory Updates include

• Revised content to support to the LOINC Ontology and collaboration with SNOMED International
  • Improved concept descriptions to enhance definitions for erythrocyte distribution diameter, sedimentation rate, specimen descriptions, and other key elements
  • Clarifications for ratios and fractions
  • Simplified component definitions with embedded units and methods separately
• Allergy concepts for food and environment-related IgE
• Genetic testing enhancements:
  • New genetic codes introduced for device-based, kit-based, and reference lab testing
  • Gene testing for hereditary thyroid, renal and pancreatic cancer
  • Collaboration with the Diabetes Technology Society to establish standardized data concepts for continuous glucose monitoring devices to detect diabetic retinal disease
• Regulatory compliance & FDA support with new concepts for FDA-approved testing cartridges and Structured Product Labeling (SPL)
• Expanded testing panels:
  • Genetic panels
  • Antibody and antigen detection tests
  • Bacterial, viral, and fungal identification tests as well as DNA presence threshold tests
  • Drug and toxicology screening
  • Coagulation and hematology-related concepts
• USCDI, FHIR, and CDA enhancements supporting advanced directives and Portable Medical Order (PMO) information.
• Italy’s Ministry of Health (MOH) transition to a Health Information Exchange supported by 150 new concepts in drug toxicology and bacterial, viral and mycology.

Key Clinical Content Highlights

• Document Ontology enhancements
  • HL7 advanced directives
  • Supporting Portugal with recording social and economic information in health-related documents
  • Pregnancy and breastfeeding
• Cardiac measurements related to end-diastolic and end-systolic volume
• Veterinary concepts for feline physical examinations
• Radiology guided procedure concepts
• HIPAA maintenance and certification concept
• HL7 CDA enhancements to capture social history in relation to health related social needs

Changes to the LOINC Table structure in this release

No changes were made as part of version 2.79 and 2.80.

See Appendix A in the LOINC Users' Guide for the current LOINC table structure.

Answer Lists

See the ReadMe included in the Answer File folder for information about its current file structure.

This release contains all of the answer lists associated with any LOINC term published in the current release. There have been no changes other than the addition of new content since the last release.

Change Snapshot

See the ReadMe included in the Change Snapshot folder for information about its current file structure.

The LoincChangeSnapshot file contains all terms that had a change in Status between the previous and current LOINC versions, such as from TRIAL to ACTIVE. It does not contain terms that were newly added in this version. With LOINC 2.79 (and with 2.80), in addition to Status changes, the LOINCChangeSnapshot file now includes changes to all fields in the Loinc.csv.

The PartChangeSnapshot file contains all of the Parts that had a change in Status between the previous and current LOINC versions, such as from ACTIVE to DEPRECATED or ACTIVE to INACTIVE (see ReadMe for Status definitions). In the future, this file may contain other types of Part changes in addition to Status changes.

Consumer Names (Alpha)

See the ReadMe included in the Consumer Name folder for information about its current file structure.

This release of the Consumer names file remains at Alpha pre-production status. It contains Consumer names for all Type 1 (Laboratory) and a subset of Type 2 (Clinical) terms in LOINC. The Consumer Names are created algorithmically based on the set of primary rules documented in the associated ReadMe notes.

Consumer Names are intended for downstream display only and are not intended to be used at any point in the clinical workflow, or for the purpose of mapping local terms to LOINC. Their use case includes consumer-facing health and wellness applications that use LOINC to encode the underlying data.

We welcome user feedback about these names.

Document Ontology

See the ReadMe included in the Document Ontology folder for information about its current file structure.

Document Ontology OWL (Alpha)

See the ReadMe included in the Document Ontology OWL folder for information about its current file structure.

The Document Ontology OWL file, first released with LOINC version 2.74, includes all the changes and additions to LOINC documents and document ontology values in a format that allows navigation of document axis hierarchies and exchange as a formal ontology. It continues at Alpha status, meaning that it is part of a testing process, and the LOINC team continues to welcome comments regarding its usability and content.

Groups (Beta)

See the ReadMe included in the Group File folder for information about its current file structure.

This release of the Group File remains at Beta pre-production status. We received no significant public comments about its contents, structure, or utility that we would have used as the basis for incrementing its maturity level or conceptualization.

Imaging Document Codes

See the ReadMe included in the Imaging Document folder for information about its current file structure and query used to generate the set of LOINC codes.‌

There have been no changes other than the addition of new content since the last release.

Linguistic Variants

See the ReadMe included in the Linguistic Variants folder for information about its current file structure.

Updated linguistic variants are generally based on the previous release version (i.e., LOINC version 2.78 is translated for inclusion in the 2.79 release). The de_DE German (GERMANY) linguistic variant for 2.79 does contain translations for new terms introduced in version 2.79.

Updated content for the LOINC 2.79 release has been provided by the translation for the following linguistic variants:

The table below shows the LOINC version when each linguistic variant included in this release was last updated.

Please note that some term translations are based on the translation of Parts. For such translations, even if no additional Part translations were provided by the producer, the number of translated terms may vary from release to release because new LOINC terms using previously translated Parts will also be included, and old LOINC terms that have been updated to use untranslated Parts will be excluded.

LOINC IEEE Medical Device Code Mapping Table

See the ReadMe included in the LOINC IEEE Medical Device Code Mapping Table folder for information about its current file structure.

There have been no changes to the structure or contents of this file since the LOINC 2.67 release in December 2019.

LOINC RSNA Radiology Playbook

See the ReadMe included in the LOINC RSNA Radiology Playbook folder for information about its current file structure.

There have been no changes other than the addition of new content since the last release.

The mappings to and content from the RSNA Playbook are based on version 2.4 of that terminology and Radiology Part mappings are based on RadLex version 4.1 and pre-release 4.2.

We are still seeking feedback on the usefulness of the PartSequenceOrder field from anybody who is utilizing this file to help inform our future efforts, e.g., whether we should remove this field.

Known issues:

Parsing issue for terms with multiple Aggregation or View type values in which one or more values is not being assigned the correct PartSequenceOrder value. We plan to address the parsing procedure in a future release if necessary, depending on whether users find this field useful (see request for feedback above).

A few outstanding cases for LOINC Radiology Parts without mappings to RadLex RIDs exists. We plan to review these with RSNA and add mappings, as appropriate, in a future release.

Terms with XXX (meaning Unspecified) as the Region Imaged without an Imaging focus do not have an Anatomy attribute (Region imaged or Imaging focus) represented in the file. The LOINC/RSNA Committee is reviewing the representation of XXX without a specified imaging focus in the LOINC/RSNA model to determine how the Anatomy should be represented.

LOINC Universal Lab Orders Value Set

See the ReadMe included in the LOINC Universal Lab Orders Value Set folder for information about its current file structure.

There have been no changes to this file since the last release.

Component Hierarchy By System

The Component Hierarchy By System (formerly known as Multiaxial Hierarchy) file provides a way to organize LOINC codes based on multiple axes of each concept. See the ReadMe included in the Component Hierarchy By System folder for information about its current file structure.

There have been no changes other than the addition of new content since the last release.

Panels and Forms

See the ReadMe included in the Panels and Forms folder for information about its current file structure.

Parts

See the ReadMe included in the Part File folder for information about its current file structure.

This file contains all of the parts associated with any LOINC term published in the current release. Note that it does not contain Parts that are used to organize terms in the Component Hierarchy By System.

There have been no changes to this file other than the addition of new content since the last release.

Updates

See the ReadMe included in the Updates folder for information about its current file structure. As a reminder, the CHANGE_REASON_PUBLIC and STATUS_TEXT fields are no longer to be considered when determining if a LOINC term has been updated because they contain information for users about term edits but are not directly related to the attributes of a term.

With this release, the Updates.mdb file has been removed. We have replaced the LOINC_UPDATES table, that was part of the Updates.mdb file, with the UpdatesAdditionalFields.csv file. The LOINC_UPDATES_BASIC_FIELDS_ONLY table of Updates.mdb is the same as Updates.csv, as it was in prior LOINC releases.

RELMA Changes

The RELMA program for Windows remains in a maintenance mode. No significant changes have been, however, the linguistic variant for Greek (GREECE) has been restored as an option for search.

All RELMA users are encouraged to install version 7.13 in order to gain access to all the new and updated terms available in LOINC version 2.80.