Podiatry Coding & Billing Alert

Question: A patient had several plantar warts on the sole of her right foot, and the podiatrist removedthem using cryosurgery. What CPT^® code should we report?

California Subscriber

Answer: Since the podiatrist removed plantar warts, you can eliminate 17000-17004 (Destruction (eg, laser surgery, electrosurgery, cryosurgery, chemosurgery, surgical curettement), premalignant lesions ...). That's because, as per the descriptors for these codes, 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.

So, then, for removal of benign or precancerous lesions, you should 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 ...). Assuming that your podiatrist did not remove more than 14 lesions, the correct cryosurgery code to report this procedure would be 17110.