What is a synonym or equivalent?
Synonyms: any single item on the Diseases Database can have many ‘names’. Thus you will find chronic obstructive pulmonary disease if you search for it as COAD, COPD or chronic obstructive airways disease. Equivalents: e.g. hyperbilirubinaemia and jaundice. One is a physical sign , the other a biochemical abnormality. The threshold for clinically observable jaundice is higher than the upper limit of normal for serum bilirubin. Nevertheless any relationships to other concepts within this database are identical. [For those familiar with MEDLARS, Diseases Database items thus resemble MeSH descriptors rather than MeSH concepts]. Hyperbilirubinaemia and jaundice are thus assigned to a single item (which is classed as both a biochemical abnormality and a symptom/sign). Equivalents are the ‘trompe d’oiell’ probably inescapable in any classification, terminology or ontology attempting to represent synonymy. The matching of linguistic descriptions, synonyms and/or concepts to real life objects
