Primary Care Coding Alert

Question: Our provider recently performed cryotherapy on a female patient to remove molluscum contagiosum from the patient’s perineum. The closest code I can find is 56501, but that specifically references the vulva as the anatomical location. Should I use it, or should I use a general benign lesion destruction code instead?

Codify Subscriber

Answer: Even though the CPT^® female genital system surgery codes 56405-56821 are intended to describe surgery on either the vulva, perineum, or introitus, code 56501 (Destruction of lesion(s), vulva; simple (eg, laser surgery, electrosurgery, cryosurgery, chemosurgery) is intended solely for destruction of lesions on the patient’s vulva.

However, in females, the perineum is defined as the area between the anus, vulva and the inner thighs, so you cannot use the code for lesion destruction in that area. Consequently, your best code choices to describe the surgery your provider performed are 17110 (Destruction (eg, laser surgery, electrosurgery, cryosurgery, chemosurgery, surgical curettement), of benign lesions other than skin tags or cutaneous vascular proliferative lesions; up to 14 lesions) or 17111 (… 15 or more lesions), depending on the number of lesions removed.