The NCIt Neoplasm Core Value Set provides a core reference set of NCIt neoplasm classification concepts that is designed to facilitate consistent coding, analysis, and data sharing across a broad range of NCI and related resources.
Background: NCIt provides NCI's comprehensive cancer classification terminology and ontology, and NCIm provides cross-mappings to many related terminologies of interest to the NCI community. NCIt includes rigorous human and machine readable definitions of many thousands of distinct types of neoplasm, organized in logic based parent-child hierarchies. NCIt is used in many NCI and other systems around the world for cancer research, care, and reference, and is useful in interpreting and translating information from many other resources. The need has long been felt for a smaller core reference set of cancer classification terms that are most commonly used for research, care, and public health purposes.
Organization: This draft set includes 1,355 neoplasm concepts (16%) out of the 8,319 currently in NCIt. It is intended to include all neoplasms frequently encountered in research and clinical settings. Beyond that, EVS estimates that this set includes approximately 80% of infrequent and rare neoplasms encountered in such settings, as well as 60% of the specific histopathologic variants of malignant neoplasms. Most of these concepts have tracked coding application in NCI's main clinical trial and metadata repositories.
Set membership and structure, including hierarchy and mapping relationships, will be extended in response to user feedback. This set will be made available in multiple views. It is an integral subset of NCIt, so users can easily cross-walk to more detailed classifications, ontology, terminology mappings, and links to key cancer information resources.
This initial release includes three components:
Neoplasm_Core.xls file has column headers on the first row:
Column Content Description Code The NCIt concept code, a unique identifier assigned to each concept by EVS to permanently track a specific meaning. Preferred Term The term chosen by EVS as most unambiguous and widely used in the biomedical community. Synonyms Additional term(s) chosen by NCI with meaning equivalent to the Preferred Term, separated by vertical bars ("|"). Definition A text definition of the term created by EVS subject matter experts. Neoplastic Status The morphologic, clinical, and genetic profile of a neoplastic growth that defines it as non-cancerous, cancerous, or of uncertain cancerous potential.
NCIt users have long asked for a simplified reference hierarchy of key concepts, but there are various ways that this might be done. The initial draft hierarchy organizes the neoplasm core set under three main headings (malignant, benign, and uncertain/mixed), with limited cross-listing. Several simplified hierarchies may well be needed; user input will be important in deciding on the most useful organization and scope for these.
Once a simplified reference hierarchy is in place, EVS plans to retire the old Common Neoplasm (Code C7077) header concept and hierarchy. These were created in 2003 to help satisfy such requests when no better solution was readily available, but structured value sets are clearly more appropriate. Please say if this transition may cause problems for your current use of NCIt.
Neoplasm_Core_Mappings.xlsx file has column headers on the first row:
Column Content Description NCIt Code The NCIt concept code, a unique identifier assigned to each concept by EVS to permanently track a specific meaning. NCIt Preferred Term The term chosen by EVS as most unambiguous and widely used in the biomedical community. NCIm CUI The NCI Metathesaurus unique identifier assigned to each concept by EVS; UMLS Metathesaurus CUIs are used where they exist. NCIm Preferred Name The concept name preferred within the Metathesaurus environment. NCIm Source Mappings A list of any of the other NCIm terminology sources with terms having the same meaning. NCIm short names for each source can be found on the NCIm Browser at https://ncim.nci.nih.gov/ncimbrowser/pages/source_help_info.jsf
Help requests on these files should go to NCIThesaurus@mail.nih.gov