benign vs malignant

When the physician excises a lesion and sends it to pathology, we are waiting for the path report before we bill the excision. When the path report comes back as mild atypia, would benign excision or malignant excision be the correct procedure code?

benign vs malignant

Mild atypia would not be considered malignant, so you would use benign excision.

Atypia

The term atypia is very ill-defined. It depends on who reads the slide. Basically, it means, "I think the cells look slightly irregular", but to a significant extent that is a subjective judgment. It is certainly not a "malignant" diagnosis.