General Surgery Coding Alert

ICD-10-CM:

Join in Breast Cancer Awareness With This Coding Quiz

Published on Wed Oct 18, 2023

Hint: Don’t ignore ‘history’ codes.

When providers in your surgery practice perform breast procedures, you often need to assign an ICD-10-CM code once the pathology report is in.

October is breast cancer awareness month, and in honor of that annual campaign, we’re here to help you navigate the diagnosis coding task.

Look at the following questions, then turn to the solutions once you’ve had a chance to try your hand at answering them.

Question 1: Following a biopsy procedure from the upper inner and upper outer left-breast quadrants, the pathology report returns a diagnosis of lobular carcinoma. How would you report this, specifically considering any further information you might need to ensure accurate code assignment?

Question 2: How would you code a breast lesion excision from a male patient’s right nipple and areola diagnosed in the pathology report as infiltrating ductal carcinoma?

Question 3: A patient’s breast biopsy comes back from the pathologist with a diagnosis of lipoma. What ICD-10-CM code would you use in this case?

Question 4: A patient with a family history of breast cancer has a small lump next to the left nipple, with nipple discharge. Following a biopsy, the pathologist diagnoses papilloma. How should you code this?

Click here when you’re ready to check your answers.