Ok, I may have said in other threads that I once worked in an oncology center. I did clinical pathways (SIBEM II) and regardless of what type and where it started the issue is to reduce the total tumor mass. There are so many good surgeons who can remove cancers from upper GI and the aforemensioned treatments. Once I had a case where a guy had 17 tumors and they got them all in a couple or a few surgeries. Of course our patients would sometime have recurrence in a 5 or 10 year period, but even then, being especially watchfull recurrence was not as severe as the initial cancer. I would list the procedure as mri or ct by CPT code and enter a diagnosis code of 22.x to a higher 22.9 ICD code and the computer would find other cases where 22.9 had a treatments with the greatest effectiveness. But I can sort of tell already that it would come up with the name of a couple of surgeons and some drugs both for the attending physician.
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