The Read clinical classification and its use in plastic surgery.

The recording of medical data has developed from crude non-specific classifications to complex systems tailor-made for individual practices. The development of the Read Clinical Classification has produced a complex classification which is user friendly and covers the whole of medicine. The classification allows unique medical concepts to be assigned preferred descriptive terms, each of which has a unique identifying code. The system allows very specific data to be recorded by using strings of linked codes. The development of the classification has led to an improvement in the way data for plastic surgery can be recorded. This paper outlines the principles used in the development of the terms for plastic surgery, and how they may be used in the future.