Easydiagnosis uses the term "condition" or sometimes "disorder" in preference or interchangeably with "disease" to serve common sense and convenience. Official diagnostic disease and procedure codes in the U.S. are now based on ICD-9.*
No classification or coding scheme for medical diagnosis or treatment can be all-inclusive or unambiguous. Words like "abscess," "anemia" and "intersex", challenge classification in ICD-9, but use of the general terms "condition", or "disorder" allows us to be nonspecific, especially when no complementary information is available. This is simply because not every patient and his problems, including symptom complaints, can be reduced to an ICD code.
The term "syndrome" deserves mention. In general, a syndrome is a collection of clinical or laboratory findings occurring together. Thus, we have "epilepsy syndromes," "stroke," "pulmonary," "dementia," "autoimmune," "Down’s, "AIDS’ and a dictionary of other syndromes. Sometimes this can present problems, especially when a syndrome is fictitious or invented. See this page.
Also see The Internet Public Library, a superb compendium of Diseases, Disorders, and Syndromes.
* These extensive codes are based on the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-9) developed by the World Health Organization. This information allows payers and Government to verify claims and generate international statistics about causes of illness and death, but does not always prevent attempts to circumvent or subvert coding in billing procedures (bundling and unbundling codes, etc.)
ICD-10, now used in Europe, will soon be adopted in the U.S. According to the descriptor, "notable improvements in the content and format include: the addition of information...to reduce the number of codes needed to fully describe a condition." (Our emphasis. Note the implied equivalence with "disease.")
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