26. januar 2004 

The National Center for Health and Statistics US
has listed CFS in two different places on the basis of
whether or not the illness was post-viral or not otherwise specified:

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/about/otheract/icd9/icd10cm.htm

If you go to the above web site you will find the following:

Page-289 draft tabular:

G93.3 Post-viral fatigue syndrome
             Benign myalgic encephalomyelitis
             Chronic fatigue syndrome, post-viral
              Excludes 1 Chronic fatigue syndrome NOS (R53.82)

page 1020-1021


R53.82 Chronic Fatigue, Unspecified
                Chronic Fatigue Syndrome NOS
                excludes 1: post-viral chronic fatigue (G93.3)
                                      post-viral fatigue syndrome (G93.3)

page 1020-1021

NOS unspecified codes


However:


On 23rd January 2004, Andre l'Hours from the WHO
headquarters provided the following clarification (in writing):

"This is to confirm that according to the taxonomic principles
governing the Tenth Revision of the World Health Organization's
International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related
Health Problems (ICD-10), it is not permitted for the same
condition to be classified to more than one rubric as this would
mean that the individual categories and subcategories were no
longer mutually exclusive".

Andre l'Hours also stated that if a country accepts the WHO
Regulations concerning nomenclature (which the UK does), then
that country is obliged to accept the ICD classification. For the
avoidance of doubt, the UK has registered no reservations
about the ICD-10 and therefore formally accepts it.


So surely the above information from Dr L'Hours will hold true to the
US ICD-10 CM; and CFS should only be indexed to G93.3.

Also the addition of post-viral chronic fatigue might be questioned

Perhaps these anomalies should be pointed out to the NCHS.


Best

Jean Harrison
MAMEinc