ICD10 Guideline for drugs and substances

This page contains an ICD10 Coding Guideline for ICD10 collection. See ICD10 coding guidelines for similar pages.

Additional Info

• Regarding the primary reason for admission
  • Code the physiologic/lab/etc manifestation that is most responsible for admission (e.g. if the agent caused renal failure AND shock, code the shock as primary as it's most immediately life threatening), not the overdose itself as primary
  • Code ALL the physiologic/lab/etc manifestations of the overdose (e.g. renal failure, respiratory failure, shock, etc).
  • If the admission is just to observe the patient (i.e. perhaps the patient MAY have taken a dangerous agent and does not YET have a physiologic manifestation requiring admission) then code as primary Observation for SUSPECTED overdose
• Regarding overdoses with multiple agents
  • Code all the agents known to have been taken
  • In the case where some are known but others are suspected then also use Drug or biological substance/agent NOS, overdose/toxicity for those others suspected
  • When there is a multi-agent overdose and none of the agents are clearly known, then just code Drug or biological substance/agent NOS, overdose/toxicity

Coding in ICD10 of Issues Related to Drugs and Substances

There are 6 categories of ICD10 codes related to drugs/biologics/agents/substances -- they are DISTINCT and it’s important to distinguish between them.

• Category:Overdose
• Category:Adverse effect
• Category:Poisoning by non-pharmaceuticals
• Category:Acute intoxication
• Category:Addiction
• Category:Withdrawal

• While many of the specific drugs or agents or substances have codes that fall under multiple of the categories (e.g. opioids), there is not perfect symmetry, i.e. there may be an individual code for a given agent in one category, while for another category that agent may instead go into a wastebasket code. Benzodiazepines are one such example.

Intravenous Drug Abuse (IVDA)

• There is no specific code in ICD10 for intravenous drug use/abuse (ivda). The codes that DO exist are for the specific agent or type of agent being used/abused --- irrespective of how it enters the body.

Other instructions related to drugs and substances in IC10

Several templates area applied to the relevant pages:

See Category:Drug and substance template

• ICD10 Guideline Altered mental status
• ICD10 Guideline Chronic Substance Abuse
• ICD10 Guideline acute intoxication
• ICD10 Guideline adverse effect
• ICD10 Guideline antiseizure drug list
• ICD10 Guideline drugs and substances
• ICD10 Guideline hallucinogen list
• ICD10 Guideline overdose
• ICD10 Guideline poisoning by non-pharmaceuticals
• ICD10 Guideline psychoactive substance list
• ICD10 Guideline repeated events
• ICD10 Guideline sedative list
• ICD10 Guideline sedative vs hallucinogen vs psychoactive
• ICD10 Guideline solvent list
• ICD10 Guideline withdrawal