Wiki Mesoblast injection

[stonecm]

My Dr. is doing a disc injection with Mesoblast as part of a study. Can I use 62290 (injection procedure for discography) since he is using fluoroscopy while he does the injection? Or is this code only for when contrast is injected? If not 62290, what code would be appropriate? Does anyone else bill for this study? Thank you!

 

[dwaldman]

You would use an unlisted code I would believe. CPT 62290 is specifically for injection for discography and if that is not the purpose of this disc injection then 62290 would not represent the procedure. Another option is confirm it with AMA CPT Network thru a paid response if needed.

http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/phy...coding-billing-insurance/cpt/cpt-network.page

Below is what I saw thru an internet search and this is a procedure purpose is not the same as cpt 62290. It is similiar to injecting the disc with an anesthetic, similiarly this not an injection for discogram purposes and is not the same service as 62290 which ends up requiring an unlisted code 64999

The peer-reviewed publication showed that a single non-surgical injection of Mesoblast's allogeneic MPCs into damaged intervertebral discs resulted in significant regeneration of disc anatomy, increase in proteoglycan content, and increase in disc height, for at least six months. The lowest dose of MPCs caused the damaged discs to become statistically equivalent to the non-degenerated normal control discs at six months when evaluated by MRI and histopathological analyses; in contrast, the degenerated discs treated with nothing or the carrier control remained statistically worse in each parameter tested than the non-degenerated normal control discs.

http://www.bioportfolio.com/news/ar...rtebral-Disc-Repair-Phase-2-Trial-Update.html

 

[stonecm]

Thank you very much for your insight and the links.. We are not billing this to insurance, but to a company that is paying our Dr. for participating in the procedure, so I will use the unlisted code when the Mesoblast injection is done and just explain to whoever pays why I used that code. Thanks again!