Hello Fellow Coders. About ten years ago, I was working in a medical records department as an ICD trainer and many of the coders that we hired had difficulty finding the correct medical codes to use. As new coders, they did not know sometimes what medical terminology to use for certain diagnoses. I sat down and went through the ICD coding book and matched up medical terminology with other synonymous terminology which had the same or similar meaning of the original medical term. In this book I have underlined the medical terms and then you will find words that are close in meaning listed in bold letters. You can use these synonyms to find other codes that match your original medical term and they may be a better choice to promote accuracy and clean claims in your reimbursement. When I first started coding, there were times when I needed to think of other words for the medical term that I was searching for. Take "clot" for an example. There are also other entries or codes under "embolism," "infarct," "obstruction," "occlusion," "stricture," and "thrombosis" which are other synonymous words or medical terms that refer to "clot." I have (italicized) the definitions of the more challenging synonymous terms. Each medical term entry is cross-referenced except for the medical term "Anomaly." The medical terminology used under "Anomaly," is a collection of terms to describe the different kinds of anomalies that are in the ICD coding book. Some of the medical terms may be numbered (1) or (2) due to having more than one synonymous meaning.