Oncology & Hematology Coding Alert

Determine whether you know how to code these conditions with a quick quiz.

When you’re coding a cancer case, you often go far beyond the patient’s existing condition, and may go back to personal and family history diagnoses as well. To determine whether you’ve got the know-how to find the right ICD-10 codes, read through the following story and fill in the blanks with the appropriate diagnoses for the described conditions. Then turn to page 29 to compare your responses to the correct codes our experts chose.

Code This Note:

My mother was out in the sun a lot when she was younger. She recently saw a specialist for the removal of a malignant melanoma on her lip (1. ___). While I was in grade school, she had a neoplasm of her right breast, which fortunately turned out to be benign (2. ___).

Several years later, she was diagnosed with cancer in situ of her bladder (3. ___). I know she was worried about the outcome, but she was thankful for the continued treatment including an encounter for chemotherapy (4. ___).

My maternal great aunt also had cancer in her cervical canal (5. ___).

On my father’s side of the family, my aunt was diagnosed with cancer of her liver (6. ___) that turned out to be inoperable.

Her husband smoked all of his adult life. This was probably the cause for the malignant neoplasm he had on the dorsal surface of his tongue (7. ___) and the malignant neoplasm on the middle lobe of his left lung (8. ___).

One of my uncles had metastatic carcinoma of colon to the right lung (9. ___, ___) (two codes).

Another uncle had metastatic colorectal cancer. His physician noted that his primary site was at the rectosigmoid junction (10. ___), and the secondary site was his liver (11. ___). He underwent palliative treatment (12. ___).