Cardiology Coding Alert

Question: The cardiologist examined a patient whose only diagnosis was "elevated creatine kinase." How should we code this diagnosis?

Nebraska Subscriber
Answer: Enzyme levels may rise in a patient with symptoms of a myocardial infarction. Use 790.5 (other nonspecific abnormal serum enzyme levels) to report these elevated levels. This code signifies a nonspecific, abnormal finding; it does not necessarily mean the patient is having a myocardial infarction.
 
If the primary care physician encounters these levels when checking a patient for chest pain, for example, the cardiologist will likely be called and the patient may be taken to the catheterization lab to see if a myocardial infarction has occurred.
You Be the Coder and Reader Questions were answered by Gay Boughton-Barnes, CPC, MPC, CCS-P, chief medical compliance officer for the University of Oklahoma Medical Center in Tulsa; Sueanne Bicknell, RHIA, CCS-P, CPC, a cardiology coding and reimbursement specialist in Dallas; Diane Elvidge, CPC, senior reimbursement specialist with Princeton Reimbursement Group, a consulting firm in Minneapolis; Linda Laghab, CPC, a practice coder with Pediatric Management Group, a multispecialty practice at Children's Hospital in Los Angeles; Martha Gerant, CPC, a practice coder with Cardiology Services, an 11-physician practice in Shawnee Mission, Kan.; Nikki Vendegna, CPC, a cardiology coding and reimbursement specialist in Overland Park, Kan.; and Marko Yakovlevitch, MD, FACP, FACC, a cardiologist in private practice in Seattle.