Cardiology Coding Alert
Report Kissing Balloons Once
Question: What is a coronary kissing balloon and how should I code the procedure? Answer: The term "kissing balloon" refers to two balloons that the physician inserts that remain close to each other and are inflated at the same time, hence "kissing."
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For example, a cardiologist may place two balloon catheters for a tandem percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA): One in the left anterior descending (LAD) artery and the other in the diagonal branch.
As with all coronary interventions, you may report the "kissing" intervention only once because you can bill only one intervention per coronary vessel. You cannot bill multiple interventions in the same vessel (or its branches) separately. Therefore, you would report 92982 (Percutaneous transluminal coronary balloon angioplasty; single vessel) once because the diagonal vessel is a branch of the LAD.
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