Wiki Spine coding issue

tswitzer

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I am working with our facility coder on this one, we have a visiting provider to complete a four-level anterior total disc arthroplasty 22856, 22858x3 due to DDD, patient had reversal of cervical lordosis preoperatively, and because the spine did not passively correct, he found it necessary to perform anterior cervical osteotomy/radical uncinate resection at the same levels to allow proper alignment with the disc replacements. There is a CCI edit for these two types of procedures, and when I look at the examples of the surgeries, they show replacement/grafting to the individual vertebral segments as well as instrumentation as needed but not replacement of the disc tissue for the osteotomy/uncinate resection. He definitely did more than just the disc arthroplasty, I am just not sure about billing both, the coding combination does allow for a modifier override on the parings. Any thoughts?

At each level we have a description of the removal of the disc material followed by osteotomy to remove/fracture and open up the uncus and complete the central and foraminal decompression and to allow the fit and fill of the disc base. The other procedure codes we found are 22220 and 2226x3 for osteotomy/resection of the vertebral sections.
 
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