Wiki Excludes 1 for chorioretinal scar after surgery and IOL diagnosis

[Bernadette10]

Why is there an excludes 1 note for H59.81x (chorioretinal scar after surgery for retinal detachment) and Z96.1 IOL? They're in different parts of the eye.

 

[Cheezum51]

You should be able to put both diagnosis down without any problems.

 

[thomas7331]

Why is there an excludes 1 note for H59.81x (chorioretinal scar after surgery for retinal detachment) and Z96.1 IOL? They're in different parts of the eye.

The excludes 1 note is under the H59.8 general category of 'other intraoperative and postprocedural complications and disorders of eye and adnexa, not elsewhere classified' and I imagine the note is there to indicate that the IOL should not be coded into that category. However, the ICD-10 guidelines say that "an exception to the Excludes1 definition is the circumstance when the two conditions are unrelated to each other" so since it's unrelated to the diagnosis that you're coding, then there should be no problem in coding them together.