Tuesday, July 28, 2026

Some ICD-10 codes are funny. This one is a monument. T71.231 (Asphyxiation due to being trapped in a discarded refrigerator, accidental) exists because a wave of child deaths in the 1950s pushed Congress to pass an actual federal law about latches - and the code set still carries the scar. It is also a clean lesson in how ICD-10 splits a single event into accidental, self-harm, assault, and undetermined.