International Classification of External Causes of Injury (ICECI)

The ICECI is no longer maintained.

The experience with ICECI has informed the redesign of the relevant chapter of ICD-11. The different elements of ICECI have been included as extension codes in the ICD-11.

Purpose/Definition

The ICECI was designed to help researchers and prevention practitioners describe, measure and monitor the occurrence of injuries and to investigate their circumstances of occurrence using an internally agreed classification.

Criteria underlying the classification were: a separate coding axis for each main concept, usefulness for injury prevention, useability in many types of settings (many parts of the world; emergency departments and other places where data are collected), comparability and complementarity with the ICD-10

ICECI had a multi-axial and hierarchical structure: core module including seven items (mechanism of injury, objects/substances producing injury, place of occurrence, activity when injured, the role of human intent, use of alcohol, use of (other) psycho-active drugs) and five additional modules to enable the collection of additional data on special topics (violence, transport, place, sports, occupational injury).

Creation date: Consultation draft May 1998
Last date change: 2003

Related WHO publication: Injury surveillance guidelines, Holder et al, 2001

Languages

English: MS Word files and Pdf files
French: draft version
Spanish: under discussion

Relationships with other classifications

Correspondence with international, multinational, national classifications
ICD-10: ICECI had been developed as a related classification with respect to ICD-10 chapter XX; ICECI did not replace this chapter because it includes the external causes and not the injuries. The CDC recommended framework for presenting injury mortality data provides a bridge between the two classifications (MMWR 1997 46[RR-14] p32). During the development of the ICECI reference was made to numerous classifications that deal with one or more aspects of the external causes of injury. The relationship of these with items in the ICECI version 1.1a ranges from very close (eg the ICECI item Economic activity is derived directly from the UN International Standard Industrial Classification) to quite distant (eg the categories in the ICECI Objects/Substances item and the way that they are classified, was informed by reference to at least five national and international systems).

Contact

E-mail: icd@who.int