In medical terminology, d/o is a shorthand abbreviation for “disorder.” You’ll most often see it in handwritten chart notes, clinical shorthand, and electronic health records where providers abbreviate common words to save time. For example, a note reading “anxiety d/o” simply means “anxiety disorder.”
How D/O Is Used in Medical Records
Healthcare providers use d/o as informal shorthand when documenting diagnoses, patient histories, and treatment plans. It appears in contexts like:
- Psychiatric and behavioral health notes: “panic d/o,” “bipolar d/o,” “substance use d/o”
- General medical charting: “seizure d/o,” “bleeding d/o,” “metabolic d/o”
- Problem lists: where space is limited and abbreviations help keep entries concise
The abbreviation always means the same thing regardless of specialty. If you see it on a lab report, discharge summary, or clinic note, substitute “disorder” and the meaning becomes clear.
D/O vs. Other Common Medical Abbreviations
Medical shorthand can be confusing because the same letters sometimes carry different meanings depending on context. D/O specifically refers to “disorder,” but nearby abbreviations can look similar. D/C, for instance, typically means “discharge” or “discontinue.” Dx means “diagnosis,” while Tx means “treatment.” Knowing the difference helps when you’re reading through your own medical records or trying to understand a provider’s notes.
Another potential source of confusion: some people read d/o as “due to” or interpret the slash as meaning “of.” In standard medical shorthand, “disorder” is the accepted meaning. If a note says “admitted d/t chest pain,” that d/t abbreviation (not d/o) means “due to.”
Is D/O an Officially Approved Abbreviation?
The Joint Commission, which accredits hospitals and health systems in the United States, does not publish a list of approved abbreviations. Instead, it requires healthcare organizations to develop their own standardized approach to abbreviations and maintain a prohibited list. That prohibited list must include specific dangerous abbreviations like “U” for units, “QD” for daily, and “MSO4” for morphine sulfate, all of which have caused medication errors due to misreading.
D/O does not appear on the Joint Commission’s mandatory “Do Not Use” list, which means hospitals are free to permit or restrict it based on their own internal policies. In practice, most organizations allow it because “disorder” carries little risk of being confused with a dangerous medication instruction.
Official coding systems take a different approach. The ICD-10-CM guidelines, published by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, do not use d/o anywhere in their formal diagnostic indexes. The only abbreviations defined in those guidelines are NEC (“not elsewhere classifiable”) and NOS (“not otherwise specified”). So while your doctor might scribble “mood d/o” in a progress note, the formal diagnostic code submitted to your insurance spells out the full term.
What to Do If You See It in Your Records
If you’re reviewing your medical records and spot d/o next to a term you don’t recognize, the first step is simply reading it as “disorder.” A note like “adjustment d/o with depressed mood” translates to “adjustment disorder with depressed mood,” which is a specific clinical diagnosis. From there, you can look up the full diagnosis name to understand what it means for your health.
Patient portals sometimes display raw clinical notes that were written for other providers, not for patients. These notes are full of abbreviations, sentence fragments, and shorthand that can feel alarming if you don’t know the code. Seeing a new abbreviation in your chart doesn’t necessarily mean something has changed about your care. If a diagnosis listed in your records surprises you or doesn’t match what you discussed with your provider, asking about it at your next visit is the simplest way to clear things up.