Cardiology Coding Alert

Question: An older male patient presented in our cardiology office complaining that his defibrillator was firing. What diagnosis code should I report for this?

Answer: Your diagnosis code for this patient will depend on the cause of the firing. If the firing resulted from an AICD (automatic implantable cardiac defibrillator) malfunction, you would describe the condition with 996.04 (Mechanical complication of cardiac device, implant, and graft; due to automatic implantable cardiac defibrillator).

If the patient had a dysrhythmia that caused the defibrillator to fire appropriately, you would use the heart condition as the primary diagnosis code, such as a code from the 427 series (Cardiac dysrhythmias). Then you would report V45.02 (Cardiac device in situ; automatic implantable cardiac defibrillator) to indicate that the patient has an AICD.