Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Clinical medicine/categorizations

Hepatology
I was so shocked to see that this category did not yet exist that I created it, but maybe I went to fast and did something wrong? --Steven Fruitsmaak 00:29, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

comments on your categories
Obviously a lot of work and somebody needed to do it. Lots of good topics. 1. delete witch doctor, chiropractors, etc. Don't put alt med stuff here unless you make an entire separate category. 2. I am aware that I am perseverating like a curmugeon on this issue, but I think your categories are unnecessarily mixing field of knowledge with profesional categories. Professional categories have several dimensions: defined by organ system, defined by whether you operate, defined by age of patient, defined by where in the hospital you work. On the other hand, we should use a separate set of categories for diseases and conditions--- probaby by organ system, but the organ systems are NOT subsets of internal medicine. My articles on puberty, growth hormone, CAH, AIS, etc do not belong in internal medicine. No one wanted to acknowledge pediatric subspecialities when we were talking about professional categories but no one presented any reasons why internist cardiologists but not pediatric cardiologists should be referenced. I got outvoted and stopped arguing about it. Just make the organ systems and their diseases independent of medical specialty, OK? Alteripse 18:00, 31 May 2004 (UTC)


 * I had in mind that everyone should feel free to just jump in and change stuff, it's very preliminany. I think [1] is a very good idea though I shudder to hink at how some of the categories we're talking about will be abused. On [2], I've added pediatric specialties as subclasses of pediatrics (you may want to change them or add to them), and I agree that diseases should go under diseases, not specialties. I just haven't worked on that section yet; I will now. (I've also been more complete in infectious diseases, figuring everyone would just add on to their fields.) Keep in mind that categories can have more than one parent category, so that, say, "tetralogy of Fallot" could fall into pediatrics, cardiology, congential malformation, vascular system, etc. Or pancreas can be a child category of both "digestive system" and "endocrine system". Or Meningitis can be a "child" of "neurology", "bacterial diseases" and "viral diseases" (it may be someone can think of a better way of representing this)- 19:44, 31 May 2004 (UTC)


 * I don't see why we would want to exclude alternative medicine. This is Wikipedia not the AMA - if you don't find it place for it in your structure someone will just come along and make it for you. --LeeHunter 03:00, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This is an old discussion but your bias misleads you. There was at the time an enormous and ambitious alternative medicine project with its own categories and organization. No one here was arguing for deletion or exclusion from wikipedia, just for allowing it to co-exist with distinction apparent rather than to try to integrate it in our categories here. For lots of generally good reasons, its not a bad idea to make clear (when applicable, obviously not always) whether a concept or treatment is "alternative" or not. A major reason was simply to avoid fights over nonsense since nearly every article seemed to be a source of contention. OK? alteripse 03:24, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * the good news on the above is Category:cardiology can be a sub-category of Category:pediatrics and a sub-category of Category:internal medicine if that's the way you want it! - Nunh-huh 02:17, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * Nothing about meds for depression, is this intentional? Will add if requested (at some point when I find some free time from under couch cushions or something). --inks 06:26, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * Add away. It's an incomplete system: make it less so! -- Nunh-huh 06:34, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Took a stab at adding categories to diseases based on causes thereof. Please feel free to edit ... Alex.tan 07:21, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Why is neurology not a subset of internal medicine ?
 * because it isn't. Neurology is a different specialty, not a subspecialty of internal medicine.- Nunh-huh 2 July 2005 11:52 (UTC)
 * But neurology IS a subspecialty of internal medicine! It certainly is in the UK and every other country in the Commonwealth! --Gak 19:21, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
 * That's a globalization issue. In the US, neurology is trained apart from internal medicine, and the certifying Board is not part of the umbrella Board of Internal Medicine. Obviously, that has to be reflected in the articles... but in the categories? -- DrGaellon (talk | contribs) 16:36, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Aside from Biochemistry, correctly under basic medical sciences, there is also Clinical Biochmistry which covers metabolic disorders. Also missing are psychology & psychiatry and maxilofacial surgery which is not the same as ENT - not forgetting denistry. Paediatrics duplicates on many entries, but the subtle differences probably warrants a separate section. Finally I've moved all medical areas under medicine, in alphabetical order and placed radiology, intensive care and emergency medicine inbetween medicine & surgery. So, I welcome thoughts on reforming the structure as: (do tell me if I'm filing up screenfulls of nonsense and I'll delete this)

medicine

..general medicine

..internal medicine

...cardiology

...clinical Biochemistry

...dermatology

...endocrinology

...gastroenterology

...geriatric medicine

...hematology

...infectious diseases

.....microbiology

.....virology

...nephrology

...neurology

...oncology

...preventive medicine

...psychology : not part of medicine, but rather it's own discipline. certainly not a subspecialty of internal medicine - Nunh-huh 2 July 2005 11:55 (UTC)

...psychiatry

...pulmonology

...rheumatology

...stroke medicine

..anesthesiology

..emergency medicine

..intensive care medicine

..occupational medicine

..public health

..radiology

surgery

..general surgery

..ear nose and throat surgery

..cardiothoracic surgery

..maxillofacial surgery

..neurosurgery

..ophthalmology

..orthopedic surgery

..otolaryngology (ENT)

..plastic surgery

..urology

..vascular surgery

dentistry

obstetrics

gynecology

pediatrics

...pediatric adolescent medicine

...pediatric cardiology

...pediatric endocrinology

...pediatric gastroenterology

...pediatric hematology

...pediatric infectious diseases

...pediatric nephrology

...pediatric oncology

...pediatric pulmonology

...pediatric rheumatology

...pediatric surgery

David Ruben 02:57, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Would this help your outline, or am I sticking my nose into someplace where it isn't welcome?

dentistry

..endodontics

..oral medicine

..oral radiology

..oral surgery

..orthodontics

..periodontics

..prosthodontics

Edwardian 2 July 2005 09:47 (UTC)

Thank you Edwardian, no one commented within a month on my suggestions, so I've updated the page with both of our contributions. David Ruben 2 July 2005 10:43 (UTC)

Welcome to both of you if we didn't already do that at the main Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Clinical medicine page (sort of the doctors' lounge). Dental stuff is certainly welcome and belongs here. There are not a lot of us-- these days mainly User:Jfdwolff and me. Either of us would be happy to help if you have questions. I have not engaged in a lot of category making because I think we have need of more articles first, and everyone has a slightly different idea of how to arrange categories, especially those based on medical specialties: should pediatric neurology be a subcategory of pediatrics or neurology or nervous system-- probably all three but certainly not a subcategory of internal medicine. My opinion but I don't feel strongly enough to argue about it...   Please feel free to write some articles. People appreciate them. alteripse 2 July 2005 11:52 (UTC)

I think that there is a USA/UK thing happening with regard to neurology. It's not a subspecialty of internal medicine here in the USA; is it considered to be so in the UK? -Ikkyu2 10:43, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

How deep do you want this categorization to go? With respect to orthopaedic reconstructive surgery -

reconstructive surgery osteotomy osteotomy of different bones arthroplasty excisional arthroplasty hemiarthroplasty unicompartmental arthroplasty total arthroplasty hip knee shoulder elbow ankle etc. Are we aiming for a complete contents list here (on this page) or should we be quite coarse and supply a new subcategorisation at each level? --Mylesclough 17:32, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Psychiatry is also not a subspeciality of internal medicine in the USA, either -- it's a specialty of its own, more akin to neurology. The neurologists and psychiatrists share the same board certification group -- The American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. Scot &rarr;Talk 20:16, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Re-inventing the wheel?
Has using the National Library of Medicine classification system been considered? It is very extensive, used across the world, and it seems to be available for public with some conditions. BjarteSorensen 12:55, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * My two cents is that the conditions imposed are not compatible with the GFDL so it's not suitable for use here. Alex.tan 15:02, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I am very surprised that this discussion did not continue. I absolutely recognize the necessity of having a classification of medical subjects for the purposes of Wikipedia. Inventing yet another classification of medical subjects in competition with MeSH (US National Library of Medicine (NLM)), ICD10 (Center for Disease Control) and SNOMED (Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine) from the American Society of Pathologists is strange when what we really want is for those systems to be collapsed into one and the ambiguities eliminated. Is it really the case that the GFDL prevents us from using the MeSH classification? All major medical libraries do. Would it be possible/sensible to discuss this directly with NLM? MeSH Tree structure MeSH tree download site

I already have a copy of the file (1.5mb).

This is the relevant portion of the conditions

2. Terms and conditions of use

No license is required to obtain the data via FTP. Use of this data is subject to the following restrictions and by obtaining a copy of the data, the user is understood to abide by these conditions:

a). If the use is not personal, (1) the U.S. National Library of Medicine must be identified as the creator, maintainer, and provider of the data; (2) the version of the data must be clearly stated by MeSH year, e.g., 1997 MeSH; and (3) if any modification is made in the content of the file, this must be stated, along with a description of the modifications. b). Neither the United States Government, nor any of its agencies, contractors, subcontractors or employees makes any warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to data contained in the database, and, furthermore, assumes no legal liability for any party's use, or the results of such use, of any part of the database.

c). You will not assert any proprietary rights to any portion of the database, or represent the database or any part thereof to anyone as other than a United States Government database.

d). The MeSH data carry an international copyright outside the United States, its Territories or Possessions. These terms and conditions are in effect as long as the user retains any of the MeSH data obtained from this site.

3. Availability

The data are available to all requesters, both within and outside the United States. There is no charge for obtaining the file. Users are required to complete an online registration form before receiving the data.

--Mylesclough 17:32, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

I would agree that a comprehensive classification system is needed & MeSH seems almost universal but it doesn't always work outside the US (eg doesn't have entries for UK terms such as learning disabilities and health visitor). Having been project manager for NMAP and consulted on the UK National electronic Library for Health we used MeSH, NLM & the UK Royal College of Nursing classification and thesaurus systems.I understand that work at the NLM to develop UMLS is supposed to provide mapping between the different systems - but I don't know how far this work has progressed yet. Rod 08:49, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Symptoms and Signs
In going through the psychiatric categories it occurred to me that one thing we could do is to make a category for each of the signs and symptoms. Thus we could have categories for “weight loss”, “cough”, “crepitations” and “formal thought disorder” for example. If we then include these category for each disease where they are found anyone could then look up the category “cough” and get a list of all articles where this was a symptom and where it had been added as a category in the article. This would be a much better method than a Google search. This would be helpful for professionals and non-professionals alike. This would mean a lot of extra categories but at least this is a guaranteed way of the symptoms ending up on the list as long as they are included in the article as categories. As long as each new symptom category had “Category:Symptom” at the bottom and each new sign category had “Category:sign (medicine)” you could then look up those categories to get a full list of the current subcategories.

The alternative would be to create lists but these need to be done manually and would be more likely to have errors. What does everyone think of this idea? --CloudSurfer 04:49, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I agree, except for "Category:sign (medicine)". category:symptom does fine, and it's identical so it's the ONLY category that should be used. I also don't agree with labelling just about every short article as a stub. 'ALL wiki articles are stubs! Books hav been written on most articles in these machines. Brewhaha@edmc.net 07:56, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Categorization table
Please see mental illness for an example of how a classification table can ease a reader into the Wikipedia category system as a method of browsing a subject. I would appreciate any comments on this approach as to its worth (or otherwise) and how it could be improved. --CloudSurfer 00:15, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I hate NeuroPsychoPharmacology
I hate categories that are concatenations, only because it makes so much work to do by hand. Even two words, like Neuroanatomy ("Neurology & Anatomy") are a pain to mechanize in a search. That's a real book, BTW, and it's identical to Pharmacology. It makes more sense, mechanically, to redirect Neuroanatomy to ("Neurology & Anatomy") than to put the single word into an article's list of categories, because a computer wouldn't know where to break "NeuroAnatomy" if someone were to do the boolean search. Brewhaha@edmc.net 07:48, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Proposed subdivision of Category:Medicine stubs
I have made a proposal to add the subdivision Category:Medical treatment stubs to the Category:Medicine stubs in order to enhance the manageability of medical stubbing in general. Please see WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Criteria. Your input and agreement would be very helpful and much appreciated. Courtland 16:22, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Health Sciences basic topics
The above article appears to have a very useful outline that was abandoned in favor of the Health sciences article for some reason. Does anyone know if this outline was expanded in some other page, or think that it might come in handy for some of the subjects tackled by this Project? Edwardian 05:10, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
 * See Outline of health sciences (and Outline of health). In the beginning, the page was created by Larry Sanger along with about 50 other pages, one per major subject, as wish lists of articles needed for those subjects. Thus, they were lists of red links. As Wikipedia's coverage grew, the links all turned blue and the lists were forgotten. In late 2005, independent of the above message, someone came across them and decided to rename them to Lists of basic topics (such as List of basic health sciences topics), and moved them to the main namespace. As the lists grew to be more comprehensive, they were renamed to "Outline of". There are now about 650 of them. The Transhumanist 18:55, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Categories in Medicine (health care)
I find it odd that thoracic surgery (lung?) would be seperate from cardiac surgery, is that its name in English? Wouldn't it have to be pulmonary surgery? Furthermore what seems to be missing is Tropical medicine, diving medicine and hyperbaric medicine. Can I insert that?--Nomen Nescio 22:39, 3 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, with reservations, I recommend:

category:diving category:hyperbaric category:medicine Hmmm. Maybe you've told me how subcategories come to be listed. Brewhaha@edmc.net 08:19, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Various articles labeled as "medicine"
Does anyone have any use for this list or recommendations for where it might be placed? I'm happy to delete it if anyone thinks it's taking up too much room here. Edwardian 07:54, 7 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Allopathic medicine
 * Alternative medicine
 * Ayurvedic medicine redirects to Ayurveda
 * Botanical medicine redirects to Herbalism
 * Chemical medicine not yet formed
 * Chiropractic medicine redirects to Chiropractic
 * Chinese herbal medicine redirects to Traditional Chinese medicine
 * Chinese medicine redirects to Traditional Chinese medicine
 * Complementary medicine redirects to Alternative medicine
 * Complementary and alternative medicine redirects to Alternative medicine
 * Conventional medicine redirects to Medicine
 * Eastern medicine not yet formed
 * Eclectic medicine
 * Evidence-based medicine
 * Folk medicine
 * Functional medicine not yet formed
 * Herbal medicine redirects to Herbalism
 * Heroic medicine
 * Hindu medicine redirects to Ayurveda
 * Holistic medicine redirects to Holistic health
 * Homeopathic medicine redirects to Homeopathy
 * Integrative medicine not yet formed
 * Maharishi Vedic Medicine
 * Mainstream medicine not yet formed
 * Medieval medicine
 * Modern medicine redirects to Medicine
 * Natural medicine
 * Naturopathic medicine
 * Osteopathic medicine redirects to Osteopathy
 * Oriental medicine redirects to Traditional Chinese medicine
 * Orthodox medicine not yet formed
 * Orthomolecular medicine
 * Patent medicine
 * Preventive medicine
 * Publicly funded medicine
 * Socialized medicine redirects to Publicly funded medicine
 * Traditional Chinese medicine
 * Traditional Japanese medicine redirects to Kampo
 * Traditional Korean medicine
 * Traditional Tibetan medicine not yet formed
 * Traditional medicine
 * Vedic Medicine redirects to Ayurveda
 * Veterinary medicine
 * Western medicine redirects to Medicine

General surgery
I stumbled upon the category "general surgery"; I would like to rename it to "abdominal surgery".

Moreover, I think in the scheme of this project, "gastroinstestinal surgery" cannot coexist with "thoracic surgery": I think there are only 2 options, 1. "abdominal surgery" and "thoracic surgery". I prefer this one because it is the most common division, I think. 2. "gastrointestinal surgery" and some other category designating surgery of the lungs (and other elements of the thorax (?), like the phrenic nerve, upper plexus brachialis,...).

--Steven Fruitsmaak 13:43, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Category:Therapy and Category:Medical treatments
Hi everybody,

while editing oral rehydration therapy, I noticed it was in both categories therapy and medical treatments. However, cat:therapy is mostly populated by non-medical therapies, like Tai Chi, tantramassage, etc.

Would it be an idea to remove all strictly medical therapies from cat:therapy to cat:medical treatments?

grtz, --Steven Fruitsmaak 19:27, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Cat:human diseases and Cat:diseases
Shouldn't many articles in category:diseases be in category:human diseases? --Steven Fruitsmaak 15:34, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * No - I think the usual default should be for reference to us humans - wikipedia is afterall a human endeveour about us and our knowledge. Hence social interaction, myocardial infarction, pneumonia, vaccination all largely apply to us humans without any need to qualify, e.g. pneumonia (human). David Ruben Talk 13:24, 7 August 2006 (UTC)


 * What about Pneumonia? --apers0n 17:24, 7 August 2006 (UTC)


 * For me, the connotation is that articles in Cat:Diseases could also occur in animals, however most articles are only about the human disease.--Steven Fruitsmaak | Talk 00:01, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

How about avian influenza? Or articles about animal studies? Bacteria? Or human-animal interactions? I second (or third) the aforementioned suggestions that you make use of systems that already exist (e.g. MeSH). No system is perfect, but reading through the complementary medicine section (why is it called alternative medicine here?), I can see some problems. Why would Chinese Herbal Medicine redirect only to Traditional Chinese Medicine and not to Herbalism? Why doesn't Traditional Chinese Medicine redirect to Eastern Medicine? Isn't that a subset of Eastern Medicine? What does Conventional Medicine mean? Leeches are used in "western medicine," are they considered complementary or conventional? Also, where are the pharmaceuticals listed, and how? By name? Generic or trade? By pharmacologic action? How about substances that occur naturally in the body that are synthesized and used in medicine (insulin)? Lots of things to consider here. Good luck!

A couple of modifications
-- DrGaellon (talk | contribs) 16:41, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) I would pull AIDS medicine back from being a subclass of virology - treating AIDS is about a lot more than just treating HIV!
 * 2) Stroke medicine is a subset of neurology; if neurology is not a subset of internal medicine (see previous discussions above), it should be moved there.
 * 3) "Intensive care medicine" is generally called "Critical care" in the US, and is considered a subclass of pulmonology. Another subclass of pulmonology is sleep medicine, which is missing altogether.

My changes
OK, I made a few changes - hope they were't too bold. First, pretty much all of pathology was missing from the existing scheme, so I fixed that. I moved basic science like "virology" and "parasitology" out of Med>IM>Infectious disease, since to my knowlege there are not many clinical ID poeple who "only" treat viruses or parasites etc - they are more appropriate for the basic science catagory. Medical microbiology is a potentially full-time, board-certified subspecialty of clinical pathology in the US though. I moved the "intensive care" entries to medicine and peds. I removed derm from IM (the way it is in the US anyway). I added subcatagories of radiology and also radiation oncology. The relationship between medicine, IM, medical subspecialties, and verious forms of primary care medicine is a bit confusing - I put in the version that made sense to me. I'm not sure how we resolve the neurology dilemma - perhaps make it a subcategory of medicine but not IM?-Rustavo 20:49, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Dentistry
I combined "oral pathology" and "dental pathology" to "oral and maxillofacial pathology" as that is what is actually studied. - Dozenist talk  00:24, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, and I realized prosthdontics should probably have subdivisions for fixed vs. removable, so I added that. Lastly, I did not know where dental hygienists and dental assistants would go on the list. - Dozenist  talk  00:28, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Teknikal ishuuz
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~daniel/WikiSense/CategoryTree.php?&wikilang=en&wikifam=.wikipedia.org&cat=neurology

Why doesn't the category tree under the category of neurology make as much sense as that? It looks to me like someone introduced a bug when they spread that deprecated tool around, and while I'm at it, when I go to edit the last section of a page, the wiki consistently tells me it doesn't exist. Brewhaha@edmc.net 04:18, 17 July 2007 (UTC)