Transitioning health data systems from International Classification of Diseases 10 to Classification 11 in Lebanon

Transitioning from the International Classification of Diseases 10 (ICD-10) to 11 (ICD-11) will enhance the accuracy of health data reporting at the national level, however, certain challenges affect the outcome of such change.

To document the experience of Lebanon in transitioning its mortality data from ICD-10 to ICD-11.

We collected hospital mortality data from the Ministry of Public Health of Lebanon for 2022 and analysed them based on ICD-10 and ICD-11. We mapped and compared the reported ICD-10 and ICD-11 causes of death using the Analysing Mortality and Causes of Death 3 (ANACoD3) tool.

Discrepancies between the frequencies of causes of death between ICD-10 and ICD-11 were most visible in noncommunicable diseases. Although NCDs were the leading causes of death for both systems, the difference was higher in ICD-10 (64.0%) than ICD-11 (41.29%). Seventeen of the 20 leading causes of death generally and 16 of the 20 leading causes of child deaths (0-4 year-olds) were the same for ICD-10 and ICD-11, but with different rankings. The noncommunicable/ communicable disease ratio for Lebanon was 3.4 with ICD-10 and 2.3 with ICD-11, and the usability index was higher for ICD-10 (38.4) than for ICD-11 (36.3).

Our findings show that moving from ICD-10 to ICD-11 at the central level can be useful in enhancing the quality of cause of death coding if there is enough data at the central level and if properly monitored by an experienced coder.