august 2009

KNEE LIGAMENT RECONSTRUCTION

There are two sets of ligaments that stabilize the knee joint. The medial and lateral collateral ligaments are known as extra-articular ligaments because they are located outside the joint. The anterior and posterior cruciate ligaments are located within the joint so they are termed inta-articular ligaments. In instances when a patient sustains a serious knee injury it may be necessary to reconstruct both the ACL and PCL. The CPT code for this procedure reads “Ligamentous reconstruction (augmentation), knee; intra-articular (open) – since there is no mention of one or more ligaments how should this code be reported?

A recent article in CPT Assistant instructs coders to report CPT code 27428 for reconstruction of the ACL and 27428-59 for reconstruction of the PCL, so it would be appropriate to report this code one time for each ligament that is reconstructed.