Is there the ability to log procedures (e.g., surgeries)?

[Cnote43]

I looked through the docs and the UI but haven't been able to determine if the intention is for me to use one of the existing record types to record past procedures like surgeries, colonoscopies, etc., or if that feature does not currently exist. Can someone let me know?

[MBombeck]

Good question. There is no separate "procedure" record type, but the Visits tab covers most of it today.

Under Checkups → Visits you can record a past visit with its date, a kind (Hospital, Specialist, Emergency and so on), the reason ("Colonoscopy", "Appendectomy") and the outcome (findings, follow-up, what to watch). A visit can link to documents from the vault (a discharge letter or a pathology report), to lab results, and to a condition from the illness module. That is how I would record surgeries and procedures, including old ones: a date is the only required field.

Two related places are worth knowing. The emergency profile has fields for chronic conditions and for implants and devices, which is where lasting consequences of a surgery (a pacemaker, a metal implant) belong so they show up on the emergency card. And the docs page for this is here: https://docs.healthlog.dev/guides/checkups-and-practitioners/

What a visit does not have is structure specific to procedures: no procedure code, no body site, no "surgical history" list of its own. If you find you want that after trying visits, tell me what you would expect to see, and I will take it into account for the structured health questionnaire that is already on the roadmap (#614).

[MBombeck]

Those three are good, concrete cases, and the third one especially is the kind of question that is hard to answer later if the data was never shaped for it. I am building this into the next release, on top of the visits you already use:

• a visit kind for a procedure or surgery, so it is marked as one rather than as a general hospital stay,
• an optional body site on it (for example left knee), so you can find everything about one part of the body,
• a procedures view that lists them in time order and can be filtered by body site, which also answers "what surgeries have you had" at a glance,
• a surgical history section in the doctor report.

Visits you have already entered can be switched to the new kind, so nothing needs to be typed in again. If you had something else in mind for any of the three, say so now and I can still take it into account.

[Cnote43]

Amazing! Thank you (again)!

The only additional thought i have related to this is that there could be a system-wide tag system, similar to what you already have for mood entries, so you could apply a tag to any record (e.g., "left knee"), and then be able to search/view everything with that tag (visits, medications, measurements, labs, etc.).

[MBombeck]

@Cnote43 this is in v1.39.1: https://github.com/MBombeck/HealthLog/releases/tag/v1.39.1

Under Checkups there is now a Procedures tab. A visit can be a procedure or surgery, with an optional body site and side (for example knee, left). The tab lists them in time order, can be searched ("left knee" finds it), and filtered by body site with counts, which answers "what surgeries have you had" at a glance. The doctor report has a surgical history section. Visits you already entered can be switched to the new kind by editing them. The body site is stored encrypted like the rest of the visit. Let me know how it works for your three cases.

[MBombeck]

@Cnote43 thank you, the tag idea made me look hard at what your three cases really need.

I am not going to add free-form tags across every record. In your example, "left knee" is a body site, and "surgery" is already a kind of visit. A tag would be a second place to write the same thing, and it only helps if every record gets tagged by hand. Readings synced from Apple Health or a scale never would be.

What I plan instead covers your third case more directly:

• Conditions get the same body site and side that procedures now have, so a knee injury or arthritis is filed against the left knee too.
• A body site view lists everything at that site: procedures, conditions, and the documents, lab results and visits linked to them.
• A medication can be linked to the condition it is for, so "what did you take for it" has an answer as well.
• Documents can be linked to lab results and medications (from [Feature] Allow more flexibility in linking documents to records #1024).

If you keep your parents' records as managed profiles, each profile gets all of this on its own.

If there is a case where you would still reach for a tag after that, something that is not a body site, a condition or a type of record, tell me what it is. That is the case I would design around.

[Cnote43]

I can use the Visits records to at least record past procedures. Thank you for the detailed information.

Other specific use cases I'm thinking of:

1. Being able to view a timeline of all procedures.
2. Being able to quickly answer "What surgeries have you had?" (often a question on intake forms).
3. From helping my parents I know there will be a time in the future when I'll need to answer a question like "What problems/tests/procedures" have you had on X," where X is some particular body part (e.g., left knee).

[MBombeck]

@Cnote43 v1.39.2 brings the next part of what we talked about here.

A condition now has the same body site and side a procedure got in 1.39.1, stored encrypted, and the field suggests the sites you already used, so "left knee" is written the same way every time. Checkups has a new Body sites tab: pick a site, and optionally a side, and you see every visit, procedure and condition filed there, with the documents, lab results and visits linked to them. Picking left also shows what is recorded on both sides. The doctor report lists the body site on conditions as well.

So for "everything about my left knee" you no longer need a tag: record the site once on the procedure and the condition, and the tab gathers the rest through the links you already have. The details are in the docs: https://docs.healthlog.dev/guides/checkups-and-practitioners/#body-sites

As always, I would be glad to hear whether this matches how you want to look things up.

[MBombeck]

@Cnote43 two more parts of what came out of this discussion are in v1.39.3.

The FHIR export now carries a condition's body site and side, so another system that reads the file knows it is your left knee. While checking the export against the official HL7 validator we also found and corrected several codes that were wrong or meant a different measurement, so the file now validates cleanly.

A connected AI assistant (through the MCP connection) can now search your visits and procedures, conditions, documents and vaccinations, so a question like "my left knee operation" or "the discharge letter" finds the right record. It reads what you would expect it to read, but never your private notes on conditions or vaccinations, and it respects your module switches.

Details: https://docs.healthlog.dev/reference/mcp/ and https://docs.healthlog.dev/features/fhir-export/

Thanks again for the questions that started all three steps.