Pediatric Coding Alert

Question: A patient reported to our office with several plantar warts on the sole of his right foot, and our pediatrician removed them using cryosurgery. What is the correct CPT^® code to use in this instance?

Missouri Subscriber

Answer: As these were plantar warts, you can eliminate 17000-17004 (Destruction (eg, laser surgery, electrosurgery, cryosurgery, chemosurgery, surgical curettement), premalignant lesions ...). That's because, as the descriptors for these codes mention, the cryosurgery is for the removal of premalignant lesions. Caused by the human papillomavirus, plantar warts, also known as verruca simplex, verruca vulgaris, and viral warts, are classified as B07.9 (Viral wart, unspecified) and are not regarded as premalignant.

For removal of benign or precancerous lesions, you would turn to 17110-17111 (Destruction (eg, laser surgery, electrosurgery, cryosurgery, chemosurgery, surgical curettement), of benign lesions other than skin tags or cutaneous vascular proliferative lesions ...). And, assuming that your pediatrician did not remove more than 14 lesions, the correct cryosurgery code to report this procedure would be 17110.