Past medical history

What it means

In a medical encounter, the physician generally will interview the patient about his or her current problem, and may perform additional testing. The past medical history (PMH) in contrast records information about the patient's medical, personal and family history that might be relevant to the presenting illness or to provide optimal clinical management. The PMH generally includes (if relevant) other major illnesses, hospitalizations, surgeries, injuries, allergies, gynecologic and obstetric history, family history, personal history including occupational history, alcohol and drug use, etc.

This subontology of the HPO is not intended to provide all needed terms to describe the past medical history, but rather to be combined with other ontologies such as MONDO in order to capture information that is often needed to properly assess phenotypic findings related to a presenting medical problem.

Part of the broader category