# diagnosis coding for ancillary service



## mabauer1 (Oct 17, 2011)

Hi, I am a very new coder and I working on coding ancillary services remotely.  I have a case where the doctor ordered a CT of the brain with the dx being written as kidney cancer restaging.  He also ordered a CT of the chest/abdomen/pelvis and listed the dx as kidney cancer restaging and noted on that script that there was recurrence in abdomen and pelvis.  I am unfamiliar with "restaging" .  How would I code this?


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## ajs (Oct 19, 2011)

From reading the guidelines in the front of the ICD-9 book, it would appear you just code the kidney cancer.  The "staging" is not coded.  This is a case of trying to determine the extent of a malignancy so you use the primary malignancy until further diagnosis is made.


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