2025 CPT code 15040
(Active) Effective Date: N/A Revision Date: N/A Surgery - Skin Grafts Integumentary System Feed
Harvesting of skin for tissue-cultured skin autograft; 100 sq cm or less.
Modifiers may be applicable depending on the circumstances, such as modifier 59 for distinct procedural services performed on the same day or 52 if the services were reduced.
Medical necessity is established by the presence of a significant full-thickness wound or burn requiring autologous skin grafting. The size and depth of the wound, along with the patient's overall health, will determine the need for a tissue cultured skin autograft.
The surgeon's responsibilities include administering local anesthesia, making the incision to harvest the skin, meticulously excising the skin sample of the specified size, ensuring proper preservation and handling of the harvested tissue for laboratory processing, and documenting the procedure.
In simple words: The doctor takes a small piece of skin (no bigger than about 100 square centimeters) from your body to grow more skin in a lab. This new skin will be used to treat a large burn or wound you have.
This CPT code, 15040, represents the surgical procedure of harvesting skin tissue from a patient for the purpose of creating a tissue-cultured skin autograft.The procedure involves the excision of a skin sample with an area of 100 square centimeters or less. This harvested tissue will then undergo in vitro processing to generate a tissue-cultured autograft for later use in the same patient, most often to treat extensive burns or full-thickness wounds.
Example 1: A patient sustains a severe burn injury covering 20% of their body surface area.A 50 sq cm skin sample is harvested using code 15040, cultured in the lab, and later grafted onto the burn site., A patient with a large chronic wound requiring surgical debridement has a 75 sq cm skin sample harvested using code 15040 to create an autograft for full-thickness wound closure., A child with a significant full-thickness wound from a traumatic injury has a 20 sq cm skin sample harvested using 15040. The harvested skin is used to grow a tissue cultured skin autograft.
** The size of the harvested skin is crucial for accurate coding.This code is only for harvesting; the application of the cultured autograft is coded separately (15150-15157).
- Revenue Code: P1G (Major Procedure - Other)
- RVU: Information not available in provided text.Consult the current CPT codebook and Medicare Physician Fee Schedule for RVU data.
- Global Days : Information not available in provided text. Global surgical days would depend on payer-specific policies.
- Payment Status: Active
- Modifier TC rule: Not applicable.This is a complete procedure.
- Fee Schedule : Information not available in provided text. Consult historical Medicare Physician Fee Schedules.
- Specialties:Plastic Surgery, Burns Surgery, General Surgery
- Place of Service:Office, Hospital Inpatient, Hospital Outpatient, Ambulatory Surgical Center