Update from the International Working Group for mapping and coding of nomenclatures for Paeditric and Congenital Heart Disease.

THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL SUMMIT ON Nomenclature for Congenital Heart Disease was held on 27 May, 2001, in Toronto, Canada, just prior to the 3rd World Congress of Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery. At the Summit, enthusiastic and virtually unanimous support was expressed for the development of a unified system for describing congenital cardiac malformations, as well as the related procedures used to palliate or correct them. At the meeting of the International Nomenclature Committee for Paediatric and Congenital Heart Disease that immediately followed the Summit, a working group was appointed and given the following tasks: * Finalise the crossmap of the nomenclature “Short Lists” of the European Paediatric Cardiac Code1 and the International Congenital Heart Surgery Nomenclature and Database Project,2 both published in 2000. * Crossmap the “Long Lists” and develop a single “super-tree” of nomenclature, to be called the International Paediatric and Congenital Cardiac Code, by the time of the next World Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina. * Report back to the International Committee to diffuse information about progress. Mid-way through the time allotted to complete these tasks, therefore, we present a brief update on the progress of the working group to date. For additional details, we refer the reader to a full report outlining the background and events leading to the founding of the International Nomenclature Project for Paediatric and Congenital Heart Disease (Fig. 1), published in Cardiology in the Young in 2002.3