S09.3Other specified and unspecified injury of middle and inner ear

S09.3 is the ICD-10-CM diagnosis code for other specified and unspecified injury of middle and inner ear. It belongs to category S09 (other and unspecified injuries of head), block S00-S09 (injuries to the head) and chapter 19 (injury, poisoning and certain other consequences of external causes). It is a header code, so it can't be reported by itself; one of its 3 subcodes must be used instead.

Within S09, choose S09.3 (Other specified and unspecified injury of middle and inner ear) only when documentation doesn't support a more specific option: injury of blood vessels of head, not elsewhere classified (S09.0), injury of muscle and tendon of head (S09.1), traumatic rupture of ear drum (S09.2), other specified injuries of head (S09.8) and unspecified injury of face and head (S09.9).

Codes in this range require a 7th character: A for initial encounter, D for subsequent encounter and S for sequela. Use placeholder "X" characters to fill any empty positions before the 7th character.

Don't report S09.3 together with the conditions in its Excludes1 note: injury to ear NOS (S09.91-).

The conditions in its Excludes2 note aren't part of S09.3, but may be coded alongside it if the patient has both: injury to external ear (S00.4-, S01.3-, S08.1-).

It has been part of ICD-10-CM since the code set took effect on October 1, 2015 and hasn't changed since.