S15.20Unspecified injury of external jugular vein

S15.20 is the ICD-10-CM diagnosis code for unspecified injury of external jugular vein. It belongs to category S15 (injury of blood vessels at neck level), block S10-S19 (injuries to the neck) 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 S15.2, choose S15.20 (Unspecified injury of external jugular vein) only when documentation doesn't support a more specific option: minor laceration of external jugular vein (S15.21), major laceration of external jugular vein (S15.22) and other specified injury of external jugular vein (S15.29).

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.

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