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Otolaryngology Coding Alert

Reader Question:

Code Dysphonia + Tumor ICD-9 Codes

Published on Tue Aug 25, 2009

Question: An ENT diagnoses a patient with dysphonia and also finds that the patient has vocal nodules. Should I code both the symptom and the cause? Minnesota Subscriber Answer: "Yes, it is appropriate to code the symptom being treated and any disorders causing the symptom," instructs Nancy Swigert, MA, CCC-SLP, BRS-S, with ENT Associates in Clearwater, Fla. Here's how: • List the condition being treated as the primary code. • Report any medical cause as secondary. For the speech-language pathologist, this would mean coding the dysphonia or the resonance disorder first and any medical cause as secondary. Check out these examples: • dysphonia (784.42) secondary to complete unilateral paralysis of the vocal folds (478.32) • hypernasality (784.43) secondary to history of unilateral cleft palate (749.01).
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