What is DVT and is it Disabling?

Deep vein thrombosis, or DVT, occurs when there is a blood clot in a vein in your body. DVT is more commonly found in your legs and pelvis region, but it can also develop in other parts of your body such as your arms. Once a blood clot forms in your vein it then turns into a solid-state. This prevents blood from flowing freely through your veins. As you can imagine, a vein being blocked, inhibiting blood flow puts you at high risk for pulmonary embolism, stroke, or heart failure.

Deep Vein Thrombosis Symptoms and Diagnosis

Because we cannot see inside our veins, we need to rely upon symptoms to flag a potential issue.

• The first warning signs of deep vein thrombosis may include pain in your legs, a cramping feeling or just feeling generally sore. Your legs may also appear discolored and warm to the touch. These symptoms may be very minor in the beginning, depending upon the blood flow restriction. Sometimes clots in your legs may simply go unnoticed and then dissolve on their own. But if you are feeling even mild symptoms of pain, swelling or cramping, you should seek medical attention immediately.

• If the clot is medium in size, you may experience more significant symptoms including chest pain or difficulty breathing.
• For a large clot, you may likely experience lung collapse, heart failure or a stroke. Approximately one in ten people with untreated DVT develops a severe pulmonary embolism, which is life-threatening.

Your medical provider will diagnose DVT by obtaining a family history, examining the affected limb, and also obtaining imaging using a duplex ultrasonogram. This testing uses sound waves to look at the blood flow in your veins.

Treatment for DVT  

If diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis, your medical provider may recommend conservative treatment including leg elevation, use of a heating pad, exercise or compression stockings. In more severe cases, surgical intervention may be required. This would include a catheter being inserted in the vein at the point of the clot with a clot-dissolving drug infused into the clot. Other forms of treatment may include taking blood thinner medications such as warfarin to help prevent recurrent clots.

For most people, lifestyle modifications and blood thinners will effectively treat deep vein thrombosis. In the more extreme cases, you may experience chronic recurrent DVT, requiring multiple catheterizations and constant leg elevation. If you find yourself in a situation where your DVT requires constant medical treatment, you may be experiencing difficulty working on a full-time basis. In that situation, social security disability may be the right program to provide financial assistance for you.

Qualifying for Social Security Disability Benefits Due to DVT Diagnosis

To qualify for social security disability benefits, you must show you are unable to work on a regular, full-time basis, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week without significant accommodations from your employer. You must also show your limitations are expected to prevent you from performing this full-time work for a minimum of 12 months. If this is you, let’s get your claim started today!

How It Works:

1. File Your Claim. Filing for disability benefits can be done either in person, over the phone, or through the SSA website. We recommend filing your claim directly through the social security website. It will ensure you have a receipt of the claim submission. It also allows you to complete the application at your leisure, saving and coming back to the application as needed.

As with anything government-related, applying for disability benefits is not an easy task. The social security administration makes it sound like it is a simple process, but that could not be farther from the truth. In fact, the social security administration will fail to tell you of the hundreds of regulations and exceptions to the rules.

1. Consider Hiring an Experienced Attorney. It is important when filing your application to put in the correct information, without giving away too much. More often than not, we find that clients who submitted their own initial application included information which was actually used against them for denying their claim. If you are truly serious about obtaining disability benefits, hiring an experienced attorney to handle your initial application will ensure your claim is handled properly from the start.
2. Receive Confirmation from Social Security. Once your application is submitted, social security will then confirm you are covered under the social security disability insurance program. To qualify for disability insurance, you must have worked five out of the past ten years, paying taxes into social security on your working income. As long as you have paid taxes the past five out of ten years, you will likely be found to have coverage under the disability insurance program.
3. Determination of Disability. The next step in reviewing your claim is whether your condition meets social security’s definition of disability. When suffering from DVT, you will likely find yourself being approved using your residual functional capacity. It is very difficult to prove you meet a Listing with this type of condition. So, your best bet is to show your DVT prevents you from working in any capacity.

The best type of evidence in this situation would be through examinations from your medical provider noting severe edema, whether pitting or non-pitting, along with a description of the pain you are in and any skin discoloration. It is also helpful if your medical provider recommends elevating your legs above waist level for a certain amount of time per day to alleviate the swelling. The need to elevate your legs during a workday would be considered an accommodation, which would find you disabled. If you lack health insurance and are unable to seek medical assistance, you will be facing an uphill battle in terms of trying to prove you are disabled. Medical evidence is key to proving the symptoms and limitations you struggle with and how they would impact your ability to work.

LaBovick Law Group’s Professionals Can Help with Your Disability Claim

If you are suffering from deep vein thrombosis, and believe you are disabled, call us at the LaBovick Law Group for a free consultation. We will advise whether this is the right program for you and even help to get your claim for benefits started. Give us a call today at (561) 623-3681 and let us fight to win you the benefits you deserve.