Common Lab & Imaging Results
Navigating the Top 1,000 LOINC Codes
Diameter Health


LOINC (Logical Observation Identifiers, Names and Codes) is a database and universal standard for identifying medical laboratory, imaging and other observations. There are nearly 100,000 codes in the LOINC terminology, but the top 1,000 represent over 99% of all usage in the real-world.

Diameter Health has examined real-world usage across the nation and tabulated a list of the most common codes used by ambulatory and hospital settings. These data represent information sampled on over 8 million results from over 2,000 sources (years 2015-2020) for information commonly recorded as results or observations in clincial data standards.

To use this navigation tool, you can search for LOINC codes using the code, description (Long Common Name) or common abbrieviations (in Display Name, not shown). You can then navigate to the full LOINC concept at the LOINC website. For some common LOINC codes, you can also see a webpage with descriptive statistics by clicking on the "Stats" link

We hope you find this page useful! For additional methodology and disclaimers, please see bottom of page. LOINC is a copyright terminology from the Regenstrief Institute.

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Methodology

LOINC has 6 axes (Component, Property, Time, System, Scale and Method) for each code. For this analysis, all codes shown in the left-hand column are methodless (when available) with associated methods shown in righthand column ("Related LOINC Codes and Notes"). This normalizes frequency for different systems which may record methods differently.

The ambulatory and hospital code frequency are based only on codes where a LOINC code was present in the observation or result or where one could be unambiguosly determined using Diameter Health software. These codes generally should not include the orderable codes (i.e. panel codes), however, some remain (e.g. LOINC code 24323-8) in the data. We have not removed these codes but have noted this information in the righthand column ("Related LOINC Codes and Notes"). There are many valid LOINC codes not shown in this tool. These are the most frequent LOINC codes, but many valid codes exist that are not shown here. If you have an uncommon code, refer to LOINC.org website to find more information.

Information was sampled from various pilot engagements performed by Diameter Health for health information exchanges, health plans and other organizations from 2015-2020. Estimates of ranked frequency naturally change over time, such as the rapid rise of COVID-related testing in 2020. Diameter Health has not adjusted raw frequency data to estimate national representativeness. No one data source comprises more than 10% of volume and these data are for sources based in the United States. These data represent information on patient care and therefore are not representative of a normal or healthy population. Use this information at your own risk and important disclaimers shown below.

Important Disclaimer

THIS INFORMATION IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE INFORMATION OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE INFORMATION.

LOINC IS COPYRIGHT PROPERTY OF REGENSRIEF INSTITUTE AND MAY ONLY BE USED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THEIR LICENSE.

This webpage was created in April 2021 using LOINC 2.69. Always refer to LOINC.org for definitive information regarding the LOINC terminology.

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