Indian experiences with International Classification of Mental and Behaviour Disorders-10: Pathway for ICD-11

BACKGROUND: International Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders (ICD)-10 has been serving its purpose in the spheres of diagnosing psychiatric patients, research, and education since long. With ICD-11 is on the horizon, this is the right time to assess issues in the application of these guidelines in routine clinical practice. AIM: In this study, an effort was made to find out day-to-day difficulties in application of ICD-10. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 130 patients attending for the first time the outpatient Department of Psychiatry, CSMMU, Lucknow, were taken as sample for the present study. The “provisional diagnosis”, which was made after the usual assessments on a single day at the clinical setting was recorded. The selected patients were later assessed in detail and a “final diagnosis was recorded for these patients. The diagnoses were matched with ICD-10 and rated on a five-point scale. STATISTICS: The direct count and percentage analysis was done. RESULTS: Results show that 67.69% “provisional diagnosis” were fully matched, while 8% and 5% diagnosis had no match and some match, respectively with the “final diagnosis”. There were also some cases that had significant match (1.5%) and almost match (17.69%). CONCLUSION: In a busy clinical setting, the focus of the clinicians is more on management and accurate diagnosis based on ICD-10 may be ignored.