Table Of Contents

Introduction

Background

SNOMED CT provides a common language that enables a consistent way of indexing, storing, retrieving, and aggregating clinical data across specialties and sites of care.

SNOMED International maintains the SNOMED CT technical design, the content architecture, the SNOMED CT content (includes the concepts table, the descriptions table, the relationships table, a history table, and ICD mappings), and related technical documentation.

Purpose

This document provides a summarized description of the content changes included in the February 2026 release of SNOMED Clinical Terms^® (SCT) International Edition.

It also includes notes detailing the known content or technical issues where the root cause is understood, the fix has been discussed and agreed to, but has yet to be implemented.

The SNOMED International release notes are available alongside the February 2026 International Edition.

Scope

This document is written for the purpose described above and is not intended to provide details of the technical specifications for SNOMED CT or encompass every change made.

Audience

The audience includes National Release Centers, WHO-FIC release centers, vendors of electronic health records, terminology developers and managers who wish to have an understanding of changes that have been incorporated into the February 2026 International Edition.

Please note, you may have to register for a user account in order to access the links included in these release notes.

Content Development Activity

Summary

Continuous quality improvement and enhancement of existing content is an ongoing process undertaken by SNOMED International in preparation for every release. The February 2026 International Edition has seen a continuation of the work driven by contributions from: Kaiser Permanente i.e. Convergent Medical Terminology (CMT), Global Medical Device Nomenclature Agency (GMDNA), Orphanet and other domain specific collaborations as well as requests received via the Content Request System (CRS). 

Additionally quality improvement activities are advanced via project driven initiatives summarized below.  Additional work items impacting every release are updates to the SNOMED CT derived maps such as ICD-10 and ICD-O; details are included in these release notes.  

Information about editorial decisions may be found in the SNOMED CT Editorial Guide; mapping guidance for ICD-10 can be found here.

Quality Assurance

Update Hierarchy Otitis Media

Modeling updates have been made to 65363002 |Otitis media (disorder)| and descendants to ensure consistency, correct classification and to sufficiently define concepts where possible. Where appropriate, 14242009 |Tympanic mucosa structure (body structure)| has been used to model inflammation. 51837005 |Tympanic cavity structure (body structure)| has be used to model effusion, representing the abnormal collection of fluid in the middle ear cavity.

These changes have been undertaken as part of this content tracker.

Number of concepts edited (approx): 150

Update Schwannoma and Malignant Peripheral Nerve Sheath Tumor

A review of content related to schwannoma and malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors (MPNST) has been undertaken to ensure alignment with current WHO Blue Books (5th edition) and ICD-O-3.2 classification. These sources confirm that schwannoma is a benign tumor, and that terminology such as malignant schwannoma and malignant neurilemoma is obsolete.

As a result of this review, outdated malignant schwannoma terminology has been inactivated on 8 concepts relating to MPNST

The concept 1268905005 |Primary malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor (disorder)| has been inactivated as a duplicate.

As part of this update:

• Appropriate nerve structure finding sites have been added where required, reflecting that schwannoma may arise from cranial, spinal, peripheral, or autonomic nerves, thus encompassing all nerves which contain Schwann cells.

• Peripheral nerve system structure finding sites have been added where necessary within the malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor disorder hierarchy.

These changes remove outdated terminology and enhance consistency and clinical relevance across the schwannoma and MPNST content. The updates provide improved alignment with up to date classifications and support accurate use of the SNOMED CT hierarchy.

These changes have completed this content tracker.

Number of concepts edited (approx): 35

Update Surgical Approach

Work has been undertaken to add 116688005 |Procedure approach (attribute)| to non-surgical procedures stating an approach in the descriptions. Normalization of proximal primitive parents has also be undertaken as part of the work for this content tracker.

Number of concepts edited (approx): 330

Body Structure 

SEP and Laterality Anatomy Reference Sets

The release file for the lateralizable body structure reference set has been updated and validated.

The release file for the SEP reference set has been updated and validated.

Clinical Finding

Update Hierarchy Septic Shock

Modeling updates have been made to 76571007 |Septic shock (disorder)| and descendants so that these concepts classify under 91302008 |Sepsis (disorder)|.

Number of concepts edited (approx): 45

Update Perforation

A review and remodel of concepts stating "Perforation of X (disorder)" in the descriptions has been undertaken. The content has been reviewed for consistency in the use of 36191001 |Perforation (morphologic abnormality)| for non-traumatic concepts and 43892002 |Perforating wound (morphologic abnormality)| for traumatic concepts as targets for the 116676008 |Associated morphology (attribute)|.

Number of concepts edited (approx): 87

Procedure

Update Cauterization and Fulguration

A review and remodel of concepts termed "Cauterization" and "Fulguration" has been undertaken. Most of the required changes related to stated sufficiently defined parents. There have been some changes to descriptions to align with the editorial guidance where required.

Number of concepts edited (approx): 131

Collaboration/Harmonization Agreements

Orphanet

Working in collaboration with Orphanet efforts are ongoing to update rare disease concepts in SNOMED CT to maintain alignment with Orphanet for the annual update of the SNOMED CT to Orphanet Maps. This map is at disorder level. In scope content has been annotated with attribution to Inserm Orphanet.

All of the concepts added for the Orphanet project have been mapped to ICD-10.

Cancer Synoptic Reporting

Cancer synoptic reports are used by many member countries to record pathology examination of cancer specimens including the College of American Pathologists (US and Canada), Royal College of Pathology (UK), Royal College of Pathology Australasia (Australia, New Zealand), PALGA (The Netherlands), Swedish Society of Pathology, and others.

For more information about this project, please see Cancer Synoptic Reporting Clinical Project Group 

International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE)

In line with approved harmonized terminology, this project is working on alignment including restructuring to update the hierarchy  << 313307000 |Epileptic seizure (finding)|.

Further information about this collaboration is available here.

Internal Quality Improvement

Machine Readable Concept Model (MRCM) Changes

No changes have been made for the MRCM in the February 2026 International Edition.

Future changes that are currently in progress can be viewed via the MRCM Daily Build Browser

Please see Early Visibility Release Notifications for future planned changes to MRCM.

Annotation Reference Set

The addition of content for the Annotations refset was commenced in the July 2024 International Edition release and is ongoing for attribution of in scope content that is part of a collaboration agreement. Where content with attribution no longer falls into scope for a collaboration agreement, the attribution has been inactivated.

SNOMED CT derived products

SNOMED CT - ICD-10 map

The SNOMED CT to the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, Tenth Revision (© World Health Organization 1994) 2016 Version map (SNOMED CT to ICD-10 Map) is included in the SNOMED CT International Edition as a Baseline. The SNOMED CT to ICD-10 Map was created to support the epidemiological, statistical and administrative reporting needs of SNOMED International member countries and WHO Collaborating Centers.

The SNOMED CT to ICD-10 Map is released in Release Format 2 (RF2) only. It is located in the file der2_iisssccRefset_ExtendedMapFull_INT_20200731.txt, which is in the Map folder under Refset, in each of the three RF2 Release Type folders. 

The SNOMED CT to ICD-10 Map is released as Refset 447562003 |SNOMED CT to ICD-10 extended map (foundation metadata concept).

The ICD-10 Mapping Technical Guide (including exemplars) is here.

Content Development Activity Summary

The map is a directed set of relationships from SNOMED CT source concepts to ICD-10 target classification codes.  The SNOMED CT source domains for the map are constrained to subtypes of 404684003 |Clinical finding (finding)|, 272379006 |Event (event)|, and 243796009 |Situation with explicit context (situation)|. The target classification used is the ICD-10 WHO version 2016 (https://icd.who.int/browse10/2016/en#/).

The map provided for this release has been updated and represents a complete map from the February 2026 release of the SNOMED CT International Edition to the ICD-10 WHO version 2016.

This includes:

Mapped content for February 2026 release

• Addition of 138 new mapped concepts

• Updates to 119 existing mapped concepts

• Retirement of 49 mapped concepts

The SNOMED CT to ICD-O morphology map has 1 new concept for this release.

We welcome feedback on any issues that users may detect when deploying the map. Issues can be reported to mapping@snomed.org.

SNOMED CT to OWL conversion and classification

The repository containing the toolkit enabling simple SNOMED CT to OWL conversion and classification can be found here, including documentation on its use: https://github.com/IHTSDO/snomed-owl-toolkit

Please contact SNOMED International at support@snomed.org if you would like to provide any feedback on ways to extend and improve the new toolkit.