tci General Surgery Coding Alert - 2010 Issue 4

You Be the Coder: Decide on Sentinel or Regional Lymph Nodes

Question: If the surgeon performs a partial mastectomy and an open axillary sentinel lymph node  excision of three nodes, should I code this as 19302 or 19301 plus 38525? New York Subscriber Answer: You should code the partial mastectomy as 19301 (Mastectomy, partial [e.g., lumpectomy, tylectomy, quadrantectomy, segmentectomy). You should separately code the sentinel lymph node biopsy using the appropriate code based on the depth of the nodes, such as 38500 (Biopsy or excision of lymph node[s]; open, superficial). Here's why: You should not list 19302 (... with axillary lymphadenectomy) for the service because a lymphadenectomy describes a...

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