Epikrisis and Discharge Summary Translation - By Physicians, for the Doctor Who Reads It Next

What an epikrisis contains, and why a physician must translate it

The epikrisis (discharge summary, "epikrizi", Entlassungsbrief or Arztbrief, lettera di dimissione, compte rendu d'hospitalisation, epicriza, "vypisnoy epikriz", 出院小结, taburcu özeti) is the structured summary a hospital issues at discharge: the patient's identification, the admitting and discharge diagnoses with ICD codes, the history and presenting complaint, the examination findings, the results of imaging, laboratory and other investigations, the treatment given including operations and procedures, the course in hospital, the condition at discharge, the medication on discharge with doses and durations, and the recommendations for follow-up. It is written by clinicians for clinicians, in the compressed language of a specialty, with abbreviations that mean one thing in cardiology and another in neurology, findings expressed in the conventions of the country's medicine, and drug names that may be brands unknown abroad. A physician translator reads it as a clinician does - recognizing the abbreviation, the convention and the drug - and renders it as a clinician in the target country would write it, with the ICD codes preserved, the drugs by their international non-proprietary names with the brand in brackets, the doses and units exact, and nothing reinterpreted; a general translator, however fluent, cannot.

Georgian records for treatment abroad

Georgian patients travel for treatment - to Germany's university hospitals and specialist clinics, to Turkey's hospitals in Istanbul and Ankara, to Israel, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, South Korea, India and Thailand - and the receiving hospital asks for the Georgian records before the first consultation: the epikrisis of every relevant admission, imaging reports and, on request, the images themselves, histology and laboratory results, the current medication list and the treating physician's referral. We translate the Georgian records into the hospital's language with physician translators who know the terminology of that country's medicine - a German Arztbrief has a fixed structure and vocabulary that German doctors expect, a Turkish epikriz its own, an Israeli summary in Hebrew or English its own - deliver certified translations by email within hours for the hospital's review and, where an insurer or a fund is paying, the notarized version it requires. Follow-up records go the other way when the patient returns: the foreign hospital's discharge summary, operation report and recommendations are translated into Georgian for the Georgian doctor who continues the care, with the same physician team so that the terminology matches across the patient's file.

Foreign records for Georgian hospitals and clinics

Foreign patients come to Georgian hospitals and clinics - for dental, cosmetic, orthopedic, cardiac, oncological and reproductive treatment, and for the everyday care of the large foreign communities in Tbilisi and Batumi - with records from home in German, Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish, Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Kazakh, Uzbek, Hindi and dozens of other languages, and Georgian clinicians need them in Georgian or English before treating: the prior discharge summaries, the operation reports, the imaging and histology, the medication list, the allergies. We translate foreign records into Georgian with physician translators in 1-2 hours for short summaries and the same day for long files, keeping the foreign clinical conventions intelligible to a Georgian reader with a note where a finding is expressed in an unfamiliar way, and we translate the Georgian clinic's records back into the patient's language when they leave, for their doctor and insurer at home.

Insurers, the Social Service Agency, disability and courts

Discharge summaries enter administrative and legal procedures where they are read for entitlement rather than treatment. Insurers - Georgian insurers reimbursing treatment abroad, foreign insurers and national health funds reimbursing treatment in Georgia, travel insurers settling claims - require the epikrisis with the invoices and, usually, a notarized translation; the Georgian Social Service Agency and the medical-social expertise commissions that assess disability require foreign records translated and notarized; employers and the Revenue Service require sick leave documentation; and courts in personal injury, medical malpractice, family and criminal cases require medical records as evidence, translated with the exactness a cross-examining lawyer will test. We translate for these readers with the same physician team, deliver the notarized translation the procedure requires, and format the file so that a claims handler or a judge can match each translated document to its original.

Codes, drugs, abbreviations and the numerical check

A discharge summary is dense with data, and each kind has its rule. ICD-10 (and ICD-11 where used) codes are preserved as codes with the diagnosis translated; drugs are rendered by INN with the brand name in brackets and the dose, route, frequency and duration exactly as written (a "1x1" or "3x daily" convention is translated to the target country's convention with the meaning unchanged); laboratory values are reproduced with their units and reference ranges, never converted; imaging findings are translated in the terminology of the target country's radiology; abbreviations are expanded on first occurrence in the language of the source specialty and rendered by the target language's equivalent abbreviation where one exists; and the clinician's hedges ("suspected", "cannot be excluded", "consistent with") are preserved exactly, because the difference between a suspected and a confirmed diagnosis is the difference between two treatments. A second physician reviews the clinical content and a numerical reader checks every value, code and dose against the source before delivery.

Pricing, confidentiality and how to order

Discharge summaries are priced per page at the medical tariff, with a fixed rate for a standard one-page epikrisis and a modest supplement for rare languages; certified translations for hospitals carry no notary fee, notarized ones for insurers, agencies and courts the notary's fee per act, and apostilles at the state fee plus handling where a foreign fund requires legalization. A standard summary is translated in 1-2 hours; a long file the same day or the next. Medical records are handled under our non-disclosure agreement by the medical team only, stored encrypted and deleted from working systems after delivery on request.

To order, send the records as PDFs or clear photos of every page on WhatsApp, Telegram or email, and tell us the hospital, insurer or agency and the country; the quote arrives within 15 minutes with the certification level the reader requires. Certified translations are delivered by email; notarized ones by scan when the notary signs and by collection at Agmashenebeli 117, near Marjanishvili Metro, or courier anywhere. For patients travelling, we deliver by email in time for the first consultation.

Frequently asked questions

Other medical and technical documents