Anesthesia Coding Alert

There’ll be no more need for ‘unspecified’ diagnoses.

Several treatments are available for pneumothorax, including surgery to "coat" the patient’s lung to repair the current leak and prevent against future ones. Currently, anytime your anesthesiologist is involved in these cases, you report diagnosis 512.8x (Pneumothorax). The three specific choices depend on how the condition is classified:

512.81 -- Primary spontaneous pneumothorax

512.82 -- Secondary spontaneous pneumothorax

512.83 -- Chronic pneumothorax.

These choices are each more specific than the code you commonly reported for pneumothorax prior to CPT^® 2012: 512.8 (Other spontaneous pneumothorax).

ICD difference: When ICD-9 gives way to ICD-10 on Oct. 1, 2014, you’ll turn to the J93.x (Pneumothorax) family of codes for your options. Four codes under J93.x that describe the condition in greater detail make up the code family. These include:

J93.0 -- Spontaneous tension pneumothorax

J93.1 -- Other spontaneous pneumothorax

J93.8 -- Other pneumothorax

J93.9 -- Pneumothorax, unspecified.

Coding tip: Pay attention to the type of pneumothorax identified in the documentation. Category J93.x excludes some commonly seen forms of pneumothorax, such as postprocedural (which you’ll report with J95.81x) and traumatic pneumothorax (S27.0).