You Be the Coder:
Interior Lumbar Diskectomy
Published on Wed Dec 19, 2012
Question: Surgery was performed on a patient for an anterior lumbar diskectomy with interbody fusion and internal fixation. We cannot find a procedure code for interior lumbar diskectomy in the CPT 2000 manual. Can you suggest one?
Gail Knight
SG Culter, MD, Tampa Answer: Eric Sandham, CPC, compliance educator for Central California Faculty Medical Group, a group practice and training facility associated with the University of California at San Francisco in Fresno, and a coder who specializes in surgical and neurosurgical procedures, states that there is no code for the anterior lumbar diskectomy with decompression. Usually, when lumbar nerve root decompression is done, it is from a more lateral angle by a transpedicular approach. This would be coded 63056 (transpedicular approach with decompression of spinal cord, equina, and/or nerve root[s]; lumbar [including
transfacet, or lateral extraforaminal approach] [e.g., far lateral herniated intervetebral disk]). Anterior lumbar diskectomy is [...]
