I can only share so much at this time due to legal reasons, but I feel it is important to post. Ill add more information as the situation allows.
I was injured in a work accident over two years ago. I injured my back and knees. Along with the expected injuries I began to develop psoriasis. It’s important to note that I never even had dry skin to this point. Immediately after the accident psoriasis patches started forming and my knee and finger joints began to severely swell and disfigure. Workers comp doctors ignored this completely and released me once the symptoms began to run wild. Shortly after I was diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis by my primary care doctor who saw a relation to my injuries from the accident. I took workers comp to court to fight for care and they fought back. Finally the Judge ordered them to send me to a top Rheumatologist and have us agree to his findings. After a year of tests and digging up every medical record I could get my hands on, the Dr. Just directly linked my PSA to the trauma of the injuries. The insurance company has been ordered to completely pay for my care forever as well as make restitution for the damage caused to my joints due to the severe delay in my treatment. I was informed that there will be a paper written on my case by the rheumatologist. This combined with the decision being in court record could change the way trauma induced inflammatory arthritis is addressed in the future. I’ve been told mine is the first case where trauma induced inflammatory arthritis has been proven medically and upheld legally. This is a huge step forward for those of us that suffer from these conditions.
That is great news for you. I be leave a car accident I was in 3 years ago was a trigger for my PsA. I look back and have had symptoms much longer. So it might of happened anyway. I look forward to hear updates
You hit the nail on the head. The biggest excuse to deny claims for trauma induced arthritis is that " it could have happened anyway at anytime". The thing to remember is that a trigger event may never have happened. Most importantly though is weather or not a trauma was the triggering event. The key for me was that I never had any symptoms whatsoever prior to my accident. Where this really doesn’t change things for people with prior symptoms it at least verifies that trauma induced inflammatory is real in the eyes of the law. Hopefully it helps people get care that has been or could have been denied to them.
dakotasun said:
That is great news for you. I be leave a car accident I was in 3 years ago was a trigger for my PsA. I look back and have had symptoms much longer. So it might of happened anyway. I look forward to hear updates
Hello, lgradi, and welcome to the community. You commented on a very old thread, so the OP may not be active here any more. It would be nice, though, to see this interesting topic have a rebirth!
first a severe right knee osteoarthrosis, after almost 6 months of knee swells and pains which revealed nothing on Xray but on MRI showed total loss of cartilage on the medial compartment with bone edema on the tibial side. Negative RA factor but no synovial liquit test was performed
one year after, I started to have nasty lower back pains on the right side, then some discomfort between the shoulder blades followed by some rashes coming down from top of my head, on the face, neck, chest and sometimes going down to both my arms and legs (they only lasted for 15-30 minutes). An SIJ MRI did not show any sign of sacroiliatis, though.
As these symptoms worsened and the HLA-B27 was negative the Rheumatologist put a diagnose of “undifferentiated SpA”. He also assessed that the knee trauma was probably “a flare”.
I have doubts about this assessment because the “USpA” symptoms appeared 1 year after the knee issue. Also the bone edema was right in the middle of the knee rather than on a lateral entheses. Causation is important for my case too but there is little information on how to know which way it worked.
Any advice is really appreciated.