Radiology Coding Alert
Keep Timeframes in Mind When Determining Sore Throat Chronicity
Question: A patient has come in with a sore throat for the past seven days. Would this qualify as an acute or chronic sore throat? New Jersey Subscriber Answer: Since the American Academy of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery (AAOHNS) doesn’t give any specific information on acute vs. chronic timeframes for sore throats as they do for sinusitis, you will fall back to more general guidelines to answer this question. According to the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), a disease can be considered chronic if its symptoms extend beyond three months. In this example, sore throat is a symptom, but ICD-10 will direct you to code sore throat as acute pharyngitis, a disease. Since these symptoms have only lasted a total of seven days, use code J02.9 (Acute pharyngitis, unspecified). Keep in mind: As you have learned from the sinusitiscoding article on pages 59-60, timeframes that determine chronic vs. acute can vary depending on numerous factors.
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Keep Timeframes in Mind When Determining Sore Throat Chronicity
Question: A patient has come in with a sore throat for the past seven days. Would [...]
