T79.7Traumatic subcutaneous emphysema

T79.7 is the ICD-10-CM diagnosis code for traumatic subcutaneous emphysema. It belongs to category T79 (certain early complications of trauma, not elsewhere classified), block T79 (certain early complications of trauma) 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 T79 (certain early complications of trauma, not elsewhere classified), T79.7 is specifically for traumatic subcutaneous emphysema. Related codes cover air embolism (traumatic) (T79.0), fat embolism (traumatic) (T79.1), traumatic secondary and recurrent hemorrhage and seroma (T79.2), traumatic shock (T79.4), traumatic anuria (T79.5), traumatic ischemia of muscle (T79.6), other early complications of trauma (T79.8), unspecified early complication of trauma (T79.9) and 1 more.

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.

The conditions in its Excludes2 note aren't part of T79.7, but may be coded alongside it if the patient has both: emphysema NOS (J43) and emphysema (subcutaneous) resulting from a procedure (T81.82).

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