Knee arthroscopy with meniscectomy and chondroplasty is one of the most common code pair questions in orthopaedics. The short answer is no, with one Medicare exception worth knowing.
Since the 2020 CPT revision, 29881 reads "with meniscectomy (medial or lateral, including any meniscal shaving) including debridement or shaving of articular cartilage (chondroplasty), same or separate compartment(s), when performed." That parenthetical settles the question: the chondroplasty work is inside 29881 by definition, so adding 29877 to the same knee reports the same work twice. NCCI edits enforce the pair, and appending modifier 59 to 29877 on the same knee invites an audit finding rather than payment.
CMS created G0289 (arthroscopy, knee, surgical, for removal of loose body, foreign body, or debridement or shaving of articular cartilage at the time of other surgical knee arthroscopy in a different compartment of the same knee) precisely for this situation. Report it with 29881 to Medicare when three things are true: the chondroplasty was in a different compartment from the meniscectomy, the work in that compartment took at least 15 minutes, and the note names both compartments explicitly.
Commercial policies vary. Some follow CPT strictly (chondroplasty never separate from 29881), and some accept 29877 with modifier 59 for a truly separate compartment. Check the specific payer policy before reporting the combination, and never let the modifier substitute for compartment level documentation.
Name each compartment entered, what was found there, and what was done there, in separate sentences. Compartment level documentation is what separates a payable claim from a bundled one, whichever payer is involved.
Paste your operative note into the Operative Note Assistant and it will apply these bundling rules to your actual documentation, flag the G0289 opportunity when the compartments support it, and price the work in wRVUs.