DDD
Abbreviation with 3 meanings
| Stands for | Degenerative disc disease |
|---|---|
| Meanings | 3 |
| Categories | Medical, Technology & Computing |
DDD has three meanings. The most common are Degenerative disc disease (musculoskeletal & rheumatology) and Domain-driven design (programming); it can also stand for Defined daily dose.
Meanings of DDD at a glance
| # | DDD stands for | Context |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Degenerative disc disease | Medical › Musculoskeletal & Rheumatology |
| 2 | Domain-driven design | Technology & Computing › Programming |
| 3 | Defined daily dose | Medical › Pharmacology |
1. Degenerative disc disease
Medical · Musculoskeletal & Rheumatology Abbreviations
Age-related wear of the intervertebral discs, with loss of water content, height and cushioning, seen on imaging as narrowed, dark discs and bone spurs. It can contribute to back or neck pain but is also extremely common in people without symptoms.
Example: MRI lumbar spine: multilevel DDD, worst at L4–L5 and L5–S1, no stenosis.
Despite the name, it is not truly a disease, and imaging findings correlate poorly with pain; studies find disc degeneration in a large majority of pain-free people over 50. The Pfirrmann scale grades disc appearance on MRI. In genetics, DDD can also refer to other conditions, so context matters.
2. Domain-driven design
Technology & Computing · Programming Abbreviations
An approach to software design that models code closely on the business domain, using a shared "ubiquitous language" with domain experts and dividing large systems into bounded contexts with their own models. Entities, value objects and aggregates are its building blocks.
Example: Using DDD, billing and shipping became separate bounded contexts with their own Customer models.
Introduced by Eric Evans in his 2003 book "Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software", nicknamed the "blue book". Bounded contexts strongly influenced how teams split monoliths into microservices. DDD is usually considered overkill for simple CRUD applications.
3. Defined daily dose
Medical · Pharmacology Abbreviations
Assumed average maintenance dose per day of a drug used for its main indication in adults, set by the WHO for statistical comparison of drug use across countries and hospitals. It is not a recommended dose.
Example: Hospital antibiotic use fell from 720 to 610 DDD per 1,000 patient-days.
DDDs allow drug consumption to be compared regardless of package size or strength, and they are the standard measure in antimicrobial stewardship surveillance in many countries. The US CDC's National Healthcare Safety Network uses days of therapy (DOT) instead, which better reflects pediatric and renally adjusted dosing.
Related abbreviations
More musculoskeletal & rheumatology abbreviations
- CRPP – Closed reduction and percutaneous pinning
- CRPS – Complex regional pain syndrome
- CTS – Carpal tunnel syndrome
- DAS28 – Disease Activity Score in 28 joints
- DDH – Developmental dysplasia of the hip
- DISH – Diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis
- DJD – Degenerative joint disease
- DM – Dermatomyositis
See all 71 musculoskeletal & rheumatology abbreviations →
More programming abbreviations
- CRLF – Carriage return and line feed
- CRUD – Create, read, update, delete
- CVS – Concurrent Versions System
- DAO – Data access object
- DFS – Depth-first search
- DI – Dependency injection
- DP – Dynamic programming
- DRY – Don't repeat yourself
See all 154 programming abbreviations →
This entry is for general education and is not medical advice. Abbreviation use varies between institutions; always confirm in context.