In order to classify and accurately describe diseases in a generally-understandable format, doctors and practitioners use The Tenth Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD 10) as a reference. This classification uses a number of codes to describe the exact situation of the patient with the respective symptoms, thereby helping the doctors to precisely keep track of the condition and its evolution. These codes are generally referred to as Diagnosis Codes.
The code group used for Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma falls within the range C82 to C88. This is because different types of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma exist depending on the type of cancerous cells observed during a microscopic investigation. While the specifics of each type are outside the scope of this article, their respective ICD-10 codes are outlined as follows:
C82 refers to Follicular lymphoma, which will be described later in this article whereas C83 refers to non-follicular lymphoma. C84 and C86 represent types of T/NK-cell lymphoma while C88 represents certain B-cell lymphomas. C85 represents other specified and non-specified types of Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Certain sub-codes are used to define these other types further. For instance, C85.1 relates to unspecified B-cell Lymphoma which further breaks down to C85.11 up to C85.19. C85.11 indicates that Lymphoma has affected lymph nodes of head, face, and neck, whereas C85.17 indicates that it has affected the spleen. The code C85.18 means that Lymphoma is spread in lymph nodes of multiple sites while C85.10 means that the site is unspecified. It can be noticed that these codes are sub-categorized to describe the situation in the greatest level of detail possible. This enables a unified reference that doctors can use to write their reports and explain the patient’s condition to one another.
Reference:
Comments