A History of Icd-9 and Icd-10

Back in the 1700s, the first attempt at classifying diseases was made by a French physician, François Boissier de Sauvages de Lacroix, who wrote the first book on the subject "Nosologia Methodical." Many different physicians followed up on his process, upgrading it to better reflect diseases as more were discovered. In 1853, at the first International Statistical Congress in Paris, it was agreed that there should be a uniform classification of diseases for the world to use. In 1855, the first standards for classification were introduced, and from that point on, there was an outline for how the coding process should work. For the next 95 years, there were multiple revisions and changes to the code, but no universal agreement on the standards. Many countries developed their own coding system, although all used the bases that were already established in categorizing these diseases.

In 1938, Canada introduced a proposal for the listing of causes of diseases. The Fifth International Congress adopted the ruling although there was no formal action taken on it. By 1944, there was a provisional list of diseases and injuries, presented by the U.S. and the United Kingdom. It wasn't until 1948, just after the creation of the World Health Organization (WHO), that there was a committee put together to establish one revision to represent all countries. The idea was to put together not only a classification of causes of death, but also classifications of illnesses and injuries. This became known as the Sixth Revision of the International Lists. The committee created the "Manual of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases, Injuries, and Causes of Death" from the data, which was in two volumes. By the time of the 7th revision, in 1955, the name International Classification of Diseases had been adopted.

The 9th version of ICD came about in 1977. To date, it's the last version that every country adopted at the same time. Incorporated into it were many of the