Wiki Arthroscopic debridement of cartilage

[AMBarber]

The surgeon debrided the cartilage & then harvested a graft for to implant 6-8 weeks later. Any ideas on how to code this one?

"...Medial femoral condyle was found to have a 4x2cm chondral defect of a bridge grade II or III chondral lesion........... Probe was then passed through the medial compartment & used to probe the condral surface. Majority of the edge of the lesion appeared to be stable & a biter was used to debride any unstable edge of the cartilage. A shaver was used to debride any fraying. ............ A large curette was passed through the medial portal site & used to harvest approximately 200-300 mg of cartilage surface from the medial femoral notch..."

The post op instructions state that the patient will be scheduled for a autologous chondrocyte implantation with a porcine patch in approximately 6-8 weeks.

We thought 29877 and 29866, however, there is a CCI edit. Ortho is not my area of coding. Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[PLAIDMAN]

The cartilage harvest (29870) is included in most other knee scope codes

If you look at your cpt book under code 27412- under the description of the codes it states for harvesting see code 29870 which is a (separate procedure)

At least it says it in my cpt book proff edition

 

[AMBarber]

Thanks!