Pseudomembranous Colitis (C-DIFF)

Legacy Content

This page is about the pre-ICD10 diagnosis coding schema. See the ICD10 Diagnosis List, or the following for similar diagnoses in ICD10:Clostridium difficile infection (C. diff)

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edit dx infobox
Category/Organ System:	Category: Infection (old)
Type:	Medical Problem
Main Diagnosis:	Pseudomembranous colitis - C-diff
Sub Diagnosis:	Pseudomembranous Colitis (C.diff colitis)
Diagnosis Code:	72-12
Comorbid Diagnosis:
Charlson Comorbid coding (pre ICD10):
Program:	Critical Care & Medicine
Status:	Currently Collected

Code this if you have a patient who is diagnosed with pseudomembranous colitis and the stool culture is positive (+ve) for C.diff.

what if is a different pathogen?

• Dr. Kumar states that the majority of pseudomembranous colitis is caused by C.diff and other types are rare.
• If a patient has diarrhea and a stool culture is negative (-ve) for C.diff, then code as gastroenteritis - culture negative (65-65).

special coding

This is not coded internally as Infections, instead the permitted pathogen is available as diagnosis explicitly.

Legacy coding - code 65 vs 72

When we worked on the code conversion to create and infection section, inadvertently we created two ways of coding pseudomembranous colitis. Since the majority of coding in the database since 1988 uses code 72-12 instead of code 65-12, we will exclude code 65-12 and use only code 72 for this diagnosis. This surfaced again 2016-02; we made it impossible to code this wrongly.