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Neurology & Pain Management Coding Alert

ICD-10 Update:

Regions Are Important To Report Radiculopathy

Published on Tue Nov 01, 2011

Regions Are Important To Report RadiculopathyRadiculopathy is site-specific for spinal regions in ICD-10. To ensure that your provider will be ready when the Oct. 1, 2013 deadline hits, you can reinforce the need for specific region notes in the documentation. Make sure your provider mentions the involvement of one or more of the specific spinal regions.Review Anatomical LocationsThe spine is divided into five regions, namely the cervical, thoracic, lumbar, sacral, and coccygeal regions. There are 33 vertebrae that encase the spinal cord. These include the 7 cervical (C1-C7), 12 thoracic (T1-T12), 5 lumbar (L1-L5), 5 sacral (S1-S5), and 4 coccygeal bones (Figure 1). The last two are fused together and the rest are separated by intervertebral spaces. The coccyx is also called the tail bone. The nerves emerge in the intervertebral spaces and the initial segment of the nerves close to the site of their origin from the spinal cord [...]
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