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Pathology/Lab Coding Alert

Reader Question:

733.90 Vs. 733.99 Contrasts 'Other' and 'Unspecified'

Published on Mon Aug 08, 2011

Question: The pathologist diagnoses a femoral head resected for a joint replacement surgery and reports "bone ossification" as the diagnosis. What ICD-9 code should I report for the condition?Utah SubscriberAnswer:  ICD-9 does not provide a specific code for bone ossification. You'll have to resort to a non-specific code to report the condition. Use 733.99 (Other disorders of bone and cartilage).Careful: You should not report 733.90 (Disorder of bone and cartilage, unspecified) for the bone ossification diagnosis. Although ICD-9 doesn't provide a code that specifies bone ossification, the pathologist does specify the condition as bone ossification. That means you should use the code for "other" specified conditions instead of the code for "unspecified" conditions.
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