# CPT 66174

> Medicare paid $947.70 for CPT 66174 in the office (non-facility) setting and $947.70 in a facility under the Q3 2021 Physician Fee Schedule, effective July 2021. These are the national allowed amounts before the ~2% sequestration cut and before locality (GPCI) adjustment. This price has been unchanged since Q1 2021, when it decreased 1.9%.

## What it is

A glaucoma operation that reopens the eye's own drainage channel. A hair-thin catheter is threaded around Schlemm's canal — the ring-shaped vessel at the edge of the iris that carries fluid out of the eye — and a thick gel is injected to stretch the channel open along its length so fluid can leave more freely and pressure inside the eye falls. In this version nothing is left behind once the catheter is withdrawn; the companion code covers the same surgery when a stent or tensioning suture stays in the canal to hold it open.

## Selected release

- Release: Q3 2021 (2021 C)
- Effective: July 1 – September 30, 2021
- Status indicator: A
- Office (non-facility) national allowed amount: $947.70
- Facility national allowed amount: $947.70
- Sequestration: not applied

## RVUs and formula

- Work RVU: 12.85
- Office (non-facility) practice expense RVU: 13.35
- Facility practice expense RVU: 13.35
- Malpractice RVU: 0.96
- Conversion factor: 34.8931
- Formula: `(work_rvu × work_gpci + pe_rvu × pe_gpci + mp_rvu × mp_gpci) × conversion_factor`

## Source and citation

- Source: Physician relative value file (Q3 2021)
- CMS file: https://www.cms.gov/files/zip/rvu21c-updated-6302021.zip
- Parsed file: PPRRVU21_JUL.csv, row 11,778
- Canonical page: https://localishealth.com/cpt/66174/2021/A
- Release-specific citation URL: https://localishealth.com/cpt/66174/2021/C
- Last significant update: 2026-08-04T03:10:45+00:00