T88.9Complication of surgical and medical care, unspecified

T88.9 is the ICD-10-CM diagnosis code for complication of surgical and medical care, unspecified. It belongs to category T88 (other complications of surgical and medical care, not elsewhere classified), block T80-T88 (complications of surgical and medical care, not elsewhere classified) 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 T88, choose T88.9 (Complication of surgical and medical care, unspecified) only when documentation doesn't support a more specific option: infection following immunization (T88.0), other complications following immunization, not elsewhere classified (T88.1), shock due to anesthesia (T88.2), malignant hyperthermia due to anesthesia (T88.3), failed or difficult intubation (T88.4), other complications of anesthesia (T88.5), anaphylactic reaction due to adverse effect of correct drug or medicament properly administered (T88.6), unspecified adverse effect of drug or medicament (T88.7) 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.

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