When you encounter vaping-related injury or illness cases in a clinical setting, you are to report the new emergency vaping code,
U07.0 as the primary diagnosis, according to
newly issued tabular guidance for the code from the ICD-10-CM Coordination and Maintenance Committee. The code is to be implemented by April 1, the committee
stated.
According to the new guidance, Code U07.0 (Vaping-related disorder), includes the following:
- Dabbing related lung damage,
- Dabbing-related lung injury,
- E-cigarette, or vaping, product use associated lung injury [EVALI],
- Electronic cigarette related lung damage and
- Electronic cigarette related lung injury.
In addition to U07.0, make sure to code any manifestations of the vaping disorder, such as:
- Abdominal pain (R10.84),
- Acute respiratory distress syndrome (J80),
- Diarrhea (R19.7),
- Drug-induced interstitial lung disorder (J70.4),
- Lipoid pneumonia (J69.1) and/or
- Weight loss (R63.4),
From the context, that list is not comprehensive. That means you should also code any additional manifestations not listed if the clinician specifically links them to vaping.
The World Health Organization (WHO) developed code U07.0 at the end of last year in response to a spike in vaping-related injuries and illnesses. The ICD-10-CM Coordination and Maintenance Committee
released the code on its website earlier this month, followed by the tabular instructions
(PBN 1/20/20).
To accommodate the new code (and potentially others), the WHO created an entirely new chapter of the ICD-10 code set, Chapter 22: Codes for special purposes (U00-U85).
Within that, the code is included in a new section, “Provisional assignment of new diseases of uncertain etiology or emergency use (U00-U49).”
A note with the new section explains that “Codes U00-U49 are to be used by WHO for the provisional assignment of new diseases of uncertain etiology.”
That could mean that as more becomes known about vaping and its relationship to injury or illness, we may see changes to the code’s structure or “Includes” terms – or even its location in the ICD-10-CM code set. Stay tuned!