Ask Dr. Z

Our physicians do a ton of these procedures, and it can get confusing when reading through all the guidelines. If the physician is using an aorto-bi-iliac endograft for just a documented para-renal AAA (34705), but both common iliacs have occlusive disease vs. aneurysm, dissection, penetrating ulcer, etc., do you recommend using codes 34705 and 37221-50 for the occlusive portion of the case in the bilateral common iliacs? Or codes 34701 and 37221-50 (but that's not the device they are implanting)? You can see a person could code this many different ways depending how they interpret the coding guidelines. Any advice would be appreciated.