Neurosurgery Coding Alert

Question: A patient is diagnosed with carotid artery stenosis in the left and right arteries. Should I report an ICD-10 code for each artery? And what are the other arterial stenosis conditions we might see in patients at our practice?

Arkansas Subscriber

Answer: You should report a single ICD-10 code for two-sided this condition: I65.23 (Occlusion and stenosis of bilateral carotid arteries). This code set also includes codes for right-sided carotid occlusion/stenosis, left-sided carotid occlusion/stenosis, and unspecified occlusion/stenosis.

Array of occlusion/stenosis codes: There are several other types of occlusion/stenosis patients that might walk in your practice’s door. All of the codes listed below with a hyphen in the 5th character spot have an option for right-sided (5th character 1); left-sided (5th character 2); bilateral (5th character 3); and unspecified (5th character 9):

• I65.0- (Occlusion and stenosis of vertebral artery)
• I65.1 (Occlusion and stenosis of basilar artery)
• I65.2- (Occlusion and stenosis of carotid artery)
• I66.0- (Occlusion and stenosis of middle cerebral artery)
• I66.1- (Occlusion and stenosis of anterior cerebral artery)
• I66.2- (Occlusion and stenosis of posterior cerebral artery)
• I66.3 (Occlusion and stenosis of cerebellar arteries)
• I66.8 (Occlusion and stenosis of other cerebral arteries)
• I66.9 (Occlusion and stenosis of unspecified cerebral artery)