Reader Questions:
Mention Number of Units in Toe Repair Coding
Published on Sun Jun 20, 2010
Question: A 60-year old patient presented to emergency with a history of a heavy tile falling on his right foot. She has sustained avulsions of the bases of the nails of the great and second toes, which involve both the skin and nail beds of each toe. The podiatrist provides local anesthesia and removes the entirety of each nail, sutures a 1 cm laceration of the skin of each toe and also sutures 1.5 cm lacerations of the nail beds of each toe. He documents nail bed repair of great toe with 4 sutures of 6.0 Vicryl and repair of nail bed of second toe with 3 sutures of 6.0 Vicryl, and mentions that he completely removed (or avulsed) the damaged nails from these two toes and also fails to mention that he repaired 1 cm lacerations of the skin adjacent to each nail with 2 sutures of 4.0 nylon. [...]