$1.5 Million Verdict Obtained
Plaintiff lawyers Dorothy Clay Sims and Matthew D. Powell obtained a $1.5 million dollar verdict for a client who was charged with malingering. Read the full story here.
Dorothy Clay Sims, Esq. ~ Sims, Stakenborg & Henry, PA.
From: View From the Hill Online
New evidence reveals over 1000 private U.S. citizens have been killed in Iraq (translation: people hired by private contractors to go to Iraq, drive trucks etc, but not permitted weapons for self protection). The number of PTSD and traumatic brain damage victims is even more staggering.
Read further info.
Dorothy Clay Sims, Esq. ~ Sims, Stakenborg & Henry, PA.
PTSD Cases….
Judge indicates he may reopen PTSD cases based on improper instructions to experts advising them NOT to find PTSD.
Read full article here.
Dorothy Clay Sims, Esq. ~ Sims, Stakenborg & Henry, PA.
Deadline for the Disabled Gets Extended
Even though April 15 has passed, there is still time for retirees, disabled veterans and others who are disabled and normally do not file a tax return to submit a 2007 form to receive an economic stimulus payment. This is good news for the millions of disabled individuals, who often have limited resources. For more information visit:
http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=177937,00.html
Dorothy Clay Sims, Esq. ~ Sims, Stakenborg & Henry, PA.
Offices in Ocala , Marion County , Florida and Gainesville , Alachua County , Florida
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Client’s Pain on the Wrong Side….
Does the defense doctor claim your client’s pain is going down the “wrong” side?
The defense doctor may be “wrong”!
Let’s say your client has a herinated disc on the left side and your client is complaining of right sided pain. Most defense doctors will claim your client is a fraud.
Point out that studies clearly show that a nerve injury on one side of the nerve (in rats) actually showed contralateral neuroapthic pain (pain in the other side). See
Hatashita, Satoshi, MD et all, Contralateral Neruopathic Pain and Neuropathology in Dorsal Root Ganglion and Spinal Cord Following Hemilateral Nerve Injury in Rats, Spine, volume 33, november 12, page 1344- 1355.
5/20/08.
Then ask the doctor about the anatomy of pain and how hemilateral nerve injuries in rats were found to cause contralateral mechanical allodynia induced by hemilateral spinal nerve which was associated with upregulation of satellite cells and TNFa in the contralateral DRG…additional research suggests that spinal astrocytes also played a part in these changes on the opposite side of the lesion.
Ask the doctor if he knows what TNFa is.
How does the upregulation of satellite cells occur?
How do spinal astrocytes play a part in this?
Dorothy Clay Sims, Esq. ~ Sims, Stakenborg & Henry, PA.
Malingering
Stress plays a role in the disruption of cognitive function and the belief is that higher blood levels of stress-related glucocorticosteroids may interfere with the formation of memory and the retrieval of information from memory stores. Chronic pain is associated with elevated levels of stress and stress hormones (see investigating the link between cognitive dysfunction and chronic pain following the 3 December 2007 pathways, Perspectives in Modern Neurology of Pain Management by Dr. Bruce Dick, Ph.D.). Another confounding factor is sleep impairment and cognitive disruption. (See Blackwell T., Yaffek, et al.) Poor sleep is associated with impaired cognitive function in older women. (The study of osteoporotic fractures J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci. 2006:61:405-410, Harrison Y, Horne, JA. Sleep Loss and Temporal Memory. Q J Exp Psychol A. 2000 Feb.; 53(1):271-9. Depression, Joem Volume 50, No. 4, April 2008 Williams, CD, Schouten, Ronald, Assessment of Occupational Impairment and Disability from Depression, page 441 to 450.) This article proposes to give a method for suggested screenings for depression and classifications of impairment using the AMA Guide and Global Assessment of Functioning number. Unfortunately this article also discusses the “alleged conflict” between the treater and the evaluator which of course gives more credibility to the evaluator which is almost always retained by the defense. Page 449: “to some extent these conflicts can be mitigated by recourse to an IME, …” Isn’t that a surprise.
Dorothy Clay Sims, Esq. ~ Sims, Stakenborg & Henry, PA.
VA Staffer’s E-Mail Calls for Fewer PTSD Diagnoses
By Anna Boyd
An employee with the post-traumatic stress disorder program at a medical facility for veterans in
In response to Perez’s e-mail, Veterans Affairs Secretary James B. Peake released a statement saying the e-mail was “inappropriate” and does not concord with the VA policy.
Read full article here.
Dorothy Clay Sims, Esq. ~ Sims, Stakenborg & Henry, PA.
Craniectomy an Option for Treatment of Traumatic Brain Injury: Presented at AANS
By Mary Beth Nierengarten
CHICAGO — May 5, 2008 — For patients with traumatic brain injury, treatment with craniectomy is a viable option over craniotomy and may be associated with improved outcomes in patients with more severe injuries, reported investigators in a poster presentation at the 76th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS).
To compare outcomes in a matched group of patients treated by craniectomy or craniotomy, researchers conducted a retrospective review of data on 95 patients who had undergone craniectomy (n = 37) or craniotomy (n = 58) at their institution between 2002 and 2006.
Principal author Jeffrey Catrambone, MD, Associate Professor of Department of Neurological Surgery, New Jersey Medical School, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Newark, New Jersey, presented the findings in a poster session April 26 to May 1.
Comparison of the 2 treatment approaches was based on the severity of injury upon admission using the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS), outcomes of treatment at follow-up using the Glasgow Outcome Scale (GOS) score, and survival. A separate analysis was also done to assess outcomes based on severity of the brain injury by stratifying all patients based on injury severity — level 1 (GCS score <7), level 2, (GCS score 8-12), and level 3 (GCS score ).
From: http://www.docguide.com
Dorothy Clay Sims, Esq. ~ Sims, Stakenborg & Henry, PA.
Half of Vets Suffering Brain and Mind Injuries Go Untreated
…but Pentagon Pretends Nothing’s Going On
By Penny Coleman
AlterNet
Tuesday 29 April 2008
An activist travels to the DoD’s annual suicide prevention conference, only to find the military brass living in a parallel universe.
The silverbacks are grooming and posturing at the microphones.
Camo and khaki, wall to wall. Bob Ireland, an Air Force psychiatrist and consultant to the Air Force Surgeon General, welcomes the audience to the Department of Defense’s sixth annual Suicide Prevention Conference and makes jokes about how suicide prevention has been the DoD’s bastard child, homeless and parentless.
In January 2008, the child nobody wanted finally managed to find a home. The Defense Center of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury assumed responsibility for an issue and an injury that the military has hidden and denied for generations.
It’s been left up to Lt. Col. Steven Pflanz, the senior psychiatry policy analyst for the Air Force surgeon general, to report on the mental healthcare practices that have been developed for those on active duty. Kerry Knox, director of the VA’s Center for Excellence on Suicide Prevention, was scheduled to share with him these introductory remarks, but is not in attendance. Apologies are made, but no one mentions how obviously difficult it would be for her to get into the self-congratulatory HOOAH! spirit of this conference when her boss just got busted big time for hiding VA suicide statistics, not just to the media but to Congress as well.
”Shh!” Ira Katz, the VA’s mental health director, coyly began an email to the agency’s chief communications director - and inconveniently made public just this week. “Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among the veterans we see in our medical facilities. Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?”
Ach, Katz, you little schemer.
In another email, he acknowledged that an average of 18 war veterans manage to kill themselves each day - five of whom were under VA care at the time.
OK, Katz is toast. Democrats are already calling for him to resign, which seems rather mild considering how many lives were damaged by his attempts at damage control. But do the math: That’s 12,000 veterans a year - VA patients - trying to kill themselves. On top of that, of the 6,570 who on average succeed each year, 1,825 of them are also patients at the VA. How is possible not to mention that kind of news at a conference on military suicides?
This must have been a challenging week for the conference organizers. How to deal with the Katz e-mails and the new RAND Corporation report, which is devastating in its description of DoD and VA failures. And the RAND report can’t be blown off as the ravings of a bunch of leftists with an anti war agenda; RAND conducts research and analysis for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the Unified Commands, the defense agencies, the Department of the Navy, and the U.S. intelligence community.
The report revealed that nearly 20 percent of military service members who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan - that’s 300,000 men and women - have symptoms of post-traumatic stress or major depression. Of those, only slightly more than half have sought VA treatment. Soldiers say that hesitation to seek help arises from fear that it will harm their careers.
But word gets around. Even among those who do seek help, RAND estimates that only about half receive treatment their researchers consider “minimally adequate.” So why bother.
The study also estimates that about 320,000 service members may have experienced a traumatic brain injury during deployment, but that just 43 percent reported ever being evaluated by a physician for that injury, despite DoD’s policy that every soldier returning from Iraq be screened.
Click here to read the rest of the article.
Dorothy Clay Sims, Esq. ~ Sims, Stakenborg & Henry, PA.
WARNING TO CLIENTS AND LAWYERS
Myspace and facebook posts can get you or your client in a lot of trouble! Defense lawyers regularly monitor these sites and if you or your client have posted inappropriate information/pictures (especially if your client is an adolescent) then the material needs to be removed.
However, be aware that it can be recreated with certain sites that will reopen closed web sites
Moral: DON’T EVER POST ANYTHING YOU WOULDN’T MIND YOUR GRANDMOTHER SEEING!
Dorothy Clay Sims, Esq. ~ Sims, Stakenborg & Henry, PA.
Offices in Ocala, Marion County, Florida and Gainesville, Alachua County, Florida. We provide service to the surrounding areas. Our telephone number is: 352-629-0480. Please visit our website at: www.ocalaw.com
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