The V code list includes codes used to document factors influencing health status and contact with health services.
The V codes are used mainly in three ways:
1.When a person with a known disease or injury, whether current or resolving, encounters the health care system for a specific treatment of that disease.
2.When a person who is not currently sick encounters the health services for some specific purpose, such as to donate an organ or tissue, receive a prophylactic vaccination, or discuss a problem that is not in itself a disease or injury.
3.When some circumstance or problem is present that influences a person health status but is not in itself a current illness or injury.
Examples of situations that might involve E codes are motor vehicle traffic accidents involving collision with a train, accidental poisonings, accidental falls, accidents caused by fires, suicide, homicide, and assault wounds. For example, in the case of a liver laceration from an assault stabbing, we would list a diagnosis code such as 865.05 followed by E966.
The M codes, or morphology of neoplasms codes. Pathologists use the codes to report specific neoplasms and tumors; surgeons do not.
