In the event your patient has a 4-inch pencil in his pharynx – as a patient in Germany recently did – you could report the pencil’s removal using CPT code 42809 (Removal of foreign body from pharynx).
Doctors at Aachen University Hospital say the man spent 15 years with a pencil in his head, according to
The Associated Press. The man, 24, sought help two years ago after “suffering for years from headaches, constant colds and worsening vision in one eye.”
A scan showed the pencil stretched from the man’s sinus to his pharynx, according to AP. It had injured his right eye socket.
The man didn’t know for sure how the pencil entered his head but said he fell once badly as a child, the AP reported. The pencil was removed and the man has recovered.
The man’s case was presented for the first time at a medical conference this week, according to AP.
This isn’t the first time a person in Germany has had a pencil lodged in the head for years.
In 2007, a pencil was removed from a German woman’s head; it had been there more than 50 years, according to
The Telegraph. She had been plagued by headaches and nosebleeds.
The 59-year-old woman told the Bild newspaper that she fell carrying the pencil when she was four years old. Nobody operated on that woman in the years following the incident because the pencil was close to vital parts of her brain, but she had the surgery in 2007 after improvements in medical technology made such a surgery possible, The Telegraph reported.