Radiology Coding Alert

A field trip to the nuclear department will take your coding up a notch.CPT rang in 2010 with brand new, all-in-one codes for myocardial perfusion imaging, packing in wall motion, ejection fraction, and more. Now that the codes have been in place a few months, the time is right to check in and make sure you've mastered the subtleties between your SPECT and planar options.Start here: Myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) allows the nuclear medicine physician to view the distribution of blood (perfusion) to the myocardial tissue (the heart wall's middle muscular layer). Physicians often order multiple studies (at rest and under stress) for comparison purposes. Below are the 2010 codes that describe multiple-study MPI:CPT 78452 -- Myocardial perfusion imaging, tomographic (SPECT) (including attenuation correction, qualitative or quantitative wall motion, ejection fraction by first pass or gated technique, additional quantification, when performed); multiple studies, at rest and/or stress (exercise or pharmacologic) [...]