CPT Knowledgebase - Feb 22, 2013

Regarding surgical preparation codes 15002-15005, the Skin Replacement Surgery guidelines state that the intent of these codes is to describe the services related to healing a wound by primary intention or by the use of negative pressure wound therapy. Therefore, is it appropriate to report codes 15002-15005 for the use of negative pressure wound therapy, such as to heal a degloving injury? For example, a patient had a wound on the lateral part of the tibia, fibula, and ankle measuring 60 cm 7 cm and the bone was covered with muscle and some granulation tissue. Debridement was performed, and included skin, subcutaneous tissue, and small amount of muscle. The patient had a degloving of the subcutaneous tissue, and a negative pressure wound therapy device was applied. Because the healing is more of primary intention, is it appropriate to report code 15002 or 15003 (legs) or codes from the 11042-11046 (muscle) series?

To view the Official AMA answer and 1000s more like this:

CPT® Knowledge Base is a compendium of real life coding questions asked by the coding community and answered by CPT® coding experts.

Over 2900 questions and authoritative answers from the CPT® professionals at the AMA. Get specific answers to challenging coding questions, and search the knowledge base of others' real world questions.

Access to this feature is available in the following products:
  • AMA's CPT® Advanced Coding Pack

demo
request yours today
 subscribe
start today
 newsletter
free subscription

Thank you for choosing Find-A-Code, please Sign In to remove ads.