Parkinson's Disease

Parkinson’s Disease (“PD”) is a neurodegenerative brain disorder. According to the Parkinson’s Foundation, about a million Americans have PD.

The Social Security Disability (“SSD”) regulations provide that your statements about how your pain or other symptoms effect your ability to work will not be rejected solely because the available objective medical evidence does not substantiate your statements. In practice however, especially before you reach the hearing stage, SSD benefits are rarely approved without objective evidence.

I represent a 52 year old former social worker with PD whose SSD application was approved today. The claimant had already provided medical records to support the opinion of the treating neurologist that the claimant was unable to work due to PD, yet the claim had been denied.

On appeal, we submitted the claimant’s DaT Scan, which provided definitive objective proof that the claimant had PD. Less than a week later, the claimant’s SSD benefits were approved.

PD is progressive and incurable . It appears that once the DaT scan provided objective proof of the progressive and incurable disease, there was no need to hold a hearing.