ICS has great delight in announcing that the ICS Glossary this month has passed the significant milestone of 2000 terms uploaded. This comes with the very recent publication of the Joint ICS-IUGA Terminology for Obstetric Pelvic Floor Disorders. This added 182 new terms to create the current total of 2068 terms uploaded to the Glossary. It is the 24th ICS Terminology document referenced in the Glossary, dating back to 1988. The ICS Terminology for Sexual Health in Men with Lower Urinary Tract and Pelvic Floor Dysfunction added another 251 terms earlier in 2022.
Each of the 2068 terms has been defined by properly constituted Working Groups. A painstaking amount of review is employed followed by Standardisation Committee review and Board overview prior to publication and subsequent Glossary upload.
The ICS Glossary acts to provide instantaneous online access to the precise description of the term. It categorises them into one of: symptom, sign, investigation, imaging, diagnosis, surgical management or conservative management. The ability is there to copy the definition and/or its citation.
The Glossary provides instantaneous online access to the source document for each term and the ability to download each and every document.
The ICS Glossary supplements a traditional core strength of ICS; namely terminology. It is, in effect, a specialised medical dictionary for male and female lower urinary tract and pelvic floor dysfunction. It is unique in these fields. There is no reason for authors of journal articles and meeting presenters not to be using the same terminology.
The ICS Glossary was launched in February 2019, a month after the publication of the ICS Terminology for Adult Male Lower Urinary Tract and Pelvic Floor Symptoms and Dysfunction. It was a personal initiative of the Editor, then Chairman of the ICS Standardisation Steering Committee. The technical support of Dominic Turner was vital with assistance from Jenny Ellis with proof-reading the initial upload by the Editor of 1136 terms from 17 documents. Dominic has continued to maintain technical support including recent upgrades.
Adding a further 932 terms has taken just under four years from an additional 7 published documents. To maintain consistency of presentation, including recognising that a particular term and its definition might have been used in more than one document, the Editor has performed the uploads. There have been queries along the way, all of which have thankfully been answered satisfactorily.
Usage of the ICS Glossary is monitored by the ICS office with around 15000 page views per month recorded prior to February 2020, the time Covid became apparent in most countries. It then declined to around 5000 page views per month by May 2020. Since June 2020 to December 2022 there has been an average of 6000 page views per month. We hope that the current publicity surrounding the milestone of 2000 terms uploaded will see a renewed understanding of the value of the Glossary to clinical and academic pursuits and, over time, further increased usage.
Founding Editor, ICS Glossary