OHDSI Home | Forums | Wiki | Github

Concepts in CONCEPT_SYNONYM that are missing from CONCEPT in my Athena download

Hello,

I downloaded from Athena the LOINC and Gender vocabularies (and of course the ones you get by default). After loading these into the v5.4 CDM, I got an error message when applying the constraints. It turns out this is caused by a number of language_concept_ids that are present in the CONCEPT_SYNONYM table, but not in the CONCEPT table:

language_concept_id
4182511
4182507
4175771
4180047
4182503
4181536
4180183
4175777
4181374
4180186
4182504
4181524
4182948
4180190

As far as I can see these are SNOMED ids. How did these end up in my Athena download?

With kind regards,
Bert

Hello @bertoverduin , thank you for your question. The language_concept_id values you listed appear to be SNOMED CT-related IDs, representing different languages or dialects. However, the SNOMED CT vocabulary may not have been included in your download from Athena if you didn’t explicitly select it or if it wasn’t part of the default download.

Since these language_concept_id values correspond to SNOMED concepts, the absence of the SNOMED CT vocabulary in your dataset is causing a mismatch between the CONCEPT_SYNONYM and CONCEPT tables. The CONCEPT_SYNONYM table includes these language_concept_id entries because they are part of the terminology used to manage synonyms in SNOMED, but without SNOMED itself, those IDs don’t have corresponding entries in the CONCEPT table.

While you specifically downloaded the LOINC and Gender vocabularies, some of the terms in those vocabularies may rely on SNOMED CT for concept definitions, including language-specific synonyms. As a result, the language_concept_id entries ended up in your download because they are used to manage synonyms in different languages or dialects. However, without the SNOMED CT vocabulary present, those IDs don’t have corresponding entries in the CONCEPT table.

You may try downloading and loading the SNOMED CT vocabulary from Athena. This will ensure that all language_concept_id values in the CONCEPT_SYNONYM table have corresponding entries in the CONCEPT table. Once you’ve downloaded SNOMED CT, reload all vocabularies into your v5.4 CDM to ensure that the missing SNOMED concept IDs are properly included. After loading the SNOMED CT vocabulary, you can try to apply the constraints without encountering the error, as the missing language_concept_id values will now be present in the CONCEPT table.

Hello @janice, Thanks for your quick reply. I do understand what is going on and how to fix it. However, it would have been good to know beforehand that if I select the LOINC and Gender vocabularies I also need to download the SNOMED vocabulary, because of the dependencies … Cheers, Bert

t