Wiki diagnosis coding for ancillary service

[mabauer1]

Hi, I am a very new coder and I working on coding ancillary services remotely. I have a case where the doctor ordered a CT of the brain with the dx being written as kidney cancer restaging. He also ordered a CT of the chest/abdomen/pelvis and listed the dx as kidney cancer restaging and noted on that script that there was recurrence in abdomen and pelvis. I am unfamiliar with "restaging" . How would I code this?

 

[ajs]

From reading the guidelines in the front of the ICD-9 book, it would appear you just code the kidney cancer. The "staging" is not coded. This is a case of trying to determine the extent of a malignancy so you use the primary malignancy until further diagnosis is made.