Payment of medical expenses related to RSD, including Ketamine infusion treatments, denied.

The petition at issue was the claimant’s petition to determine additional compensation seeking payment for medical expenses related to treatment of RSD and for pre-approval of treatment for an RSD-related gastrointestinal problem. The Board concluded that the claimant had failed to meet her burden of showing that the ongoing Ketamine infusion treatment and the proposed gastrointestinal treatment were necessary and reasonable for the work injury. The Board accepted the testimony of the employer’s medical expert as being more credible in establishing that the necessary criteria for a diagnosis of RSD were absent here and that there was no convincing evidence that the claimant was actually benefiting from the treatments. The decision also criticized the treatment from the claimant’s medical expert, describing it as an unending series of invasive treatments with very little follow up to determine the level of improvement, if any.

_{Case Law Alerts, 2^nd Quarter, April 2015}

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