> emergency department visits in which a gambling disorder was recorded as either the main or a contributing reason for the visit.

from the study

> An ED visit for a gambling disorder was defined on the basis of the clinical judgement of the treating team and was identified when ICD-10 codes F63.0 (pathological gambling) or Z726 (gambling or betting problems) were coded as the main or contributing reason for the visit.

> In 29.3% of these ED visits, a gambling disorder was listed as the primary cause of the visit,

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BugsJustFindMe 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Contributing reason, sure, but main reason makes no sense.

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nyeah 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Maybe. On the other hand it's common for genuine medical problems to 'make no sense' to a layperson. That tradition goes back thousands of years.

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pas 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

apparently there's an ICD code for it

i guess if someone gets a meltdown (mental breakdown) after losing a lot of money

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BugsJustFindMe 3 hours ago | parent [-]

That definitely still seems like contributing.

Also, the ICD ontology specifically exists for billing purposes and isn't the same as patient diagnostic classification, though there is overlap and people do mistakenly use it as such sometimes. But there's a difference between "emergency visit for X" (treat X) and "emergency visit because of X" (treat Y proximal to X). (I also edited my original comment to include this last part, since it seems likely to create confusion)

	▲	pas 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		there's a difference in semantics between clinical reason and billing, agreed, though it seems that the news article did not sensationalize the study, and the study uses at least one valid code that can be a primary reason for a visit, and while I'm absolutely just a random dog on the internet, for me the overlap in meaning seems significant to warrant the use of this term. https://icdlist.com/icd-10/F63.0 https://icdlist.com/icd-10/Z72.6 "The code is not accepted as a principal diagnosis "

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3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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