Wiki Laceration Repair

[staceylh]

patient with bilateral wrist lacerations, both approx. 5cm repaired in the ED. Would you use 1 CPT adding the lengths together, or would you consider these to be 2 different anatomical sites and use the repair with both left and right modifiers?

 

[CodingKing]

For repairs you add them all up if they fall under the same CPT grouping, For instance 12031-12037 Repair, intermediate, wounds of scalp, axillae, trunk and/or extremities (excluding hands and feet)) is a single grouping. Now if it was intermediate on one side and simple on the other it would be two different codes since levels of repair have their own anatomical code groupings.