General Surgery Coding Alert

Source defines code families.

CPT provides over 50 codes for surgical fixation of skin replacement and skin substitute grafts. Add the following table and "terminology translator" to your coding tool box to help you pick the right code(s).

Terminology translator: To understand the "Graft Type" column in the table, you'll need to use the following glossary:

• Autograft: Graft using skin taken from the patient's own body
• Allograft or Homograft: Graft using human skin taken from a donor other than the patient (including a cadaver)
• Allogeneic: Taken from a different person than the patient.
• Acellular graft: Graft using a dermal collagen matrix (synthetic, or from a source such as pig skin or cadaver) with viable cells and major histocompatibility class antigens removed to minimize graft rejection
• Xenograft: Non-human skin graft or biologic wound dressing (for instance, porcine tissue or pig skin)
• Tissue culture: Tissue (or cells dispersed from tissue) grown in a sterile, nutrient rich environment to produce more cells
• Full-thickness graft: A thicker skin layer from a donor site that includes all of the epidermis and dermis.