Hi,
You can bill for an attempt, there is a lot of discrepancy as to when to bill it. We use the -52 if the physician crosses the lession, but is unable to deploy the balloon or stent. The other time we do this is if he does get the balloon or stent into the lession, but the devices fails. We use -53 if the procedure is aborted due to the patients health, they go into v-tach and the device was in the artery, but it is too risky to continue. Generally in this case there is a code called. Cardiology Coding Alert, Cardiology Pink Sheet and the Cardiology Colation have articles, but I don't remember the dates.
Heidi Bass, ACS-CA, CPC, CCS-P
Heart Center of the Rockies