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Brush Up On These Ortho Acronyms to Decipher Operative Reports

Published on Thu Jan 27, 2011

Use these tips to better translate abbreviations into codes.Do you know your APL from your ACL? If not, you may need a crash course on orthopedic acronyms. If you can't differentiate between the abbreviations in your surgeon's chart, you could be applying the wrong codes to your claims.Because orthopedic coders encounter various acronyms when reading, coding and evaluating medical charts, we take for granted that we can decipher most of the abbreviations and acronyms that we come across. But even the most experienced orthopedic coder can benefit from a primer that outlines the most common abbreviations.Review the following four examples and see if you can figure out what the surgeon did:1. Repaired EPB, APL, BR, FDS ring, FDS long, PL and FPL tendons.2. 85 y.o. est. pt. requires THR for AVN.3. CTR for dx of adv. CTS on 65 y.o. new pt.4. PLIF at L5-S1.The solutions: Translated into real-world terminology, [...]
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