Wiki Interventional Radiology question

[DQuint]

Hi All,

I have a question concerning the use of CPT 47552-47556 for percutaneous procedures in interventional radiology. A consultant pointed us to information contained in the Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) Coding Book that says that it is appropriate to use the codes for percutaneous procedures that do not use an endoscope. There are no guidelines or paranthetical notes in CPT to support this, nor are there any CPT Assistant or Clinical Examples in Radiology articles for these codes. There are no Federal Register or CMS documents that support it either. We don't use endoscopy codes when a procedure is not endoscopic for any other procedures, so why this? Any thoughts?

 

[MLS2]

per the Interventional Radiology Coding Users' guide:

"In the biliary system, the CPT Editorial Panel and HCFA (now CMS) instructions to use the endoscopy codes (47552-47556) were direct and specific. To this end, radiological supervison & interpretation code cross references were inserted in the AMA CPT manual and a new biliary "endoscopy" code (47556) was also added at the request of the SIR and the ACR. Therefore, the biliary "endoscopy" codes (47552-47556) are to be considered the accurate codes for describing these services whether performed percutaneously or by endoscopic approach."