# ventricular fibrillation arrest



## brandyleigh23

My doc has a diagnosis for a patient he saw today for ventricular fibrillation arrest. I have spent an hour trying to find what the correct icd 9 code would be. Vfib is 427.41 and Cardiac arrest is 427.5 and when I pulled the patients records they did have cardiac arrest in 2007.  Would I use both of these codes or just use the vfib code?  Or maybe there is another code that I should be using... Can someone point me in the right direction?!

Brandy Edmondson, CPC


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## theresa.dix@tennova.com

brandyleigh23@hotmail.com said:


> My doc has a diagnosis for a patient he saw today for ventricular fibrillation arrest. I have spent an hour trying to find what the correct icd 9 code would be. Vfib is 427.41 and Cardiac arrest is 427.5 and when I pulled the patients records they did have cardiac arrest in 2007.  Would I use both of these codes or just use the vfib code?  Or maybe there is another code that I should be using... Can someone point me in the right direction?!
> 
> Brandy Edmondson, CPC



Brandy,
 I think what that would mean is the patient had V fib and it put him/her into cardiac arrest. Now that you say the patient had cardiac arrest in 2007. make sure the dx you have is current and not s/p v fib arrest for todays encounter. Also coding guidelines are that if the patient is alive not to use the 427.5 as primary dx. .


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## brandyleigh23

Thank you Theresa, I appreciate you helping me!

Brandy Edmondson, CPC


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