General Question for the Week of June 21, 2021
MedLearn Publishing
June 20, 2021
What is your opinion on how to use diagnosis Z18.10 – Retained foreign body fragments, metal – for a new gunshot wound (GSW)? I think of ‘retained’ as being old and embedded, but there are differing opinions in my department. If the patient has a new GSW to the tibia and fibula with fractures and for a chest and abdomen x-ray taken around the same time as the tibia & fibula, they state in the impression, “small metallic fragments project over the left middle to upper lung zone and left lateral abdominal wall, likely from a gunshot wound”, would you use Wound, unspecified to the abdomen and chest walls or retained foreign body fragments, metal? Or neither?
