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The hospital registrar reports that the case was identified at the hospital because of the referral for chemotherapy for the metastatic GIST. The records from the out-of-state hospital mentioned a history of a small bowel resection in 2003 for a borderline tumor. The registrar went back through the hospital's old records and found the surgery was done for GIST of low malignant potential at her facility. The question is whether to report the case or not, and if reported, is 2003 the diagnosis date.

The rules say to change the behavior and backdate the diagnosiswhen a tumor is presumed benign and islater diagnosed as malignant. Another problem for this case is that the out-of-state hospital did not review the slides from the 2003 surgery.

A question was posted to CAnswer forum 9/26/18 and answered stating that 8046 is not on the AJCC list of histologies for the lung chapter in the 8th edition. If the final diagnosis on the pathology report is just NSCLC, NOS with no subtype/variant, what histology/solid tumor rule would I use? In this situation, I am not able to query the pathologist. Would I code the histology to 8010 as per AJCC post?

Patient had a breast excision that proved a single tumor with no evidence of invasive carcinoma. The final diagnosis stated: Size (extent) of EPC DCIS: Spanning approximately 1.3 cm. The pathologist did not describe separate foci of DCIS; only one tumor comprised of both encapsulated papillary carcinoma and DCIS. The encapsulated papillary carcinoma was not described as invasive. The pathology noted: This case is best classified as EPC conventional DCIS. No conventional stromal invasion is identified. Solid Tumor Rule M2 confirms a single tumor is a single primary.

However, there does not appear to be an H Rule that instructs how to code histology. The Single Tumor: In Situ Only module, has only three H Rules and none of them apply to this case. The patient does not have Paget disease (H1), does not have a single histology (H2, there are multiple histologies present as DCIS and EPC are listed on different rows in Table 3) and does not have DCIS and LCIS (H3). How does one arrive at the correct histology for this case?

The previous SEER Program Coding and Staging Manual included Appendix C that has Coding Guidelines for some sites. The breast guidelines specifically instructed one to code the subsite with the invasive tumor when the pathology report identifies invasive tumor in one subsite and in situ tumor in a different subsite or subsites. The current Breast Solid Tumor Rules Table 1: Primary Site Codes refers one back to the SEER Manual and COC Manual for a source document priority list but does not make mention of invasive vs. in situ on that final version of the source document.

In addition, the Colon Solid Tumor Rules currently contains no Site Coding Section/Table. However, the Lung Solid Tumor Rules do and also refer one to the SEER/COC Manuals for document priority lists. The Urinary Solid Tumor Rules has both the Primary Site Codes Table and an additional section called Priority for Coding Primary Site, which does not reference a document priority list or other manuals. Unfortunately, there is additional information in Appendix C Bladder Coding Guidelines that may have been used in the past regarding site source priority.

Could the remaining applicable Appendix C information be consolidated into the Solid Tumor Rules consistently among all the sites to lessen the need for additional manual referencing? Also, is there a reason one site includes the Priority Site Coding instructions and others do not?

Code 9920/3 is not included under rule M3. However, disease process knowledge would indicate that because the patient has an underlying AML subtype, the leukemia cutis is due to the AML cells that have migrated into the skin tissue. This appears to be a single advanced disease process essentially diagnosed simultaneously.