The most common signs and symptoms of an oncoming exacerbation are:
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease [COPD] with acute bronchitis ICD-10-CM Diagnosis Code J44.0 Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease with (acute) lower respiratory infection
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ICD-Code J44. 9 is a billable ICD-10 code used for healthcare diagnosis reimbursement of Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. This is sometimes referred to as chronic obstructive lung disease (COLD) or chronic obstructive airway disease (COAD).
1: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease with acute exacerbation, unspecified.
1 - COPD with (acute) exacerbation. If the COPD exacerbation is in the setting of COPD with acute bronchitis, both code J44. 0 and code J44. 1 may be reported when appropriate.
J44. 9, Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, unspecified and J45. 40, Moderate persistent asthma, uncomplicated. Codes will be dependent upon the specificity of the COPD and asthma documented.
0 is coded first, followed by the code for pneumonia, and assigned to DRG 190 COPD with MCC. AECOPD and Pneumonia: When a patient has both pneumonia and acute exacerbation of COPD, it is appropriate to assign both codes J44. 0 [COPD with acute lower respiratory infection] and J44. 1 [COPD with (acute) exacerbation].
Since the term COPD is unspecified and represents any form of unspecified chronic obstructive lung disease, an additional code is not needed when the diagnosis of emphysema is documented in the healthcare record. The emphysema is the specified type of COPD.
ICD-10-CM Code for Unspecified asthma with (acute) exacerbation J45. 901.
Exacerbation of COPD. An exacerbation (ex-zass-cer-bay-shun) of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a worsening or “flare up” of your COPD symptoms. In many cases an exacerbation is caused by an infection in the lungs, but in some cases, the cause is never known.
Note: Code J44. 0 includes a note that says “use additional code to identify infection.” The infection has been identified as acute bronchitis (J20. 9) so this code should be added in addition to the others.
If the documentation supports that the patient has a specific type of asthma documented and COPD, both codes could be reported. An example would be documentation in the record is COPD and moderate persistent asthma.
Both asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), including emphysema and chronic bronchitis, make breathing difficult. In fact, they share many similarities. However, they are different lung diseases. Asthma-COPD overlap syndrome (ACOS) is diagnosed when you have symptoms of both asthma and COPD.
Multiple diagnoses under the COPD umbrella, including chronic obstructive asthma and chronic obstructive bronchitis, are coded to J44. 9.