sct history

Show a concept's current historical status in the loaded SNOMED CT Snapshot: whether it is active, its latest effective time, its inactivation reason, and all active RF2 historical associations to related or replacement concepts.

When to use: you need a focused retirement/replacement view for an identifier from an old record. For the complete current concept record, use sct lookup. A chronological lifecycle, including a concept's birth date and every prior state, requires Full RF2 and is planned in R25.

Usage

sct history <SCTID> [--db <FILE>] [-f text|json|yaml]

Example

$ sct history 9468002 --db snomed.db
  [9468002] Inactive example disorder
  INACTIVE - Duplicate
    Replaced by: [22298006] Myocardial infarction
    Same as: [195967001] Asthma
  Snapshot effective: 20260101
  Note: chronological history requires Full RF2 (R25).

Use a database built with sct ndjson --include-inactive --refsets all followed by sct sqlite. Without --include-inactive, retired concepts are absent.

Without --refsets all the command refuses to run, because the Association reference sets it reports were never ingested:

$ sct history 9468002 --db simple.db
Error: sct history needs historical association data, which this database did not load
(its Association reference sets were never ingested). Rebuild with `sct ndjson --refsets all`
then `sct sqlite`.

This is deliberate. An inactive concept printed with no replacements reads as "no replacement exists", and an empty historical_associations array cannot be distinguished by a script from a genuinely unassociated concept. A build whose Association files were present but empty is valid and simply reports no associations. If you only need a concept's active status, sct lookup works against any build.

Structured output

--format json and --format yaml output id, preferred_term, active, effective_time, inactivation_reason, and historical_associations. Active concepts are returned with active: true, a null reason, and an empty association list, so scripts can distinguish a known active code from a missing one.