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PATTERSON v. ARKANSAS DEPARTMENT HEALTH5/3/2000
icated by arachnoiditis, which yields a DRE category 5 impairment for lumbosacral disorders, and he assigned appellant a twenty-five percent impairment to the person as a whole.
Dr. Moore did not agree with Dr. Rutherford's assessment. On October 3, 1996, Dr. Moore noted that appellant has continued and ongoing pain problems. She is on pain medication, which is ineffective in giving her long-term relief. She obtained rehabilitative treatment at BRI where a number of exercises in "relative futility" were carried out. Her leg braces have been removed, which tends to relegate her even more to her wheelchair because she has no functional capacity in dorsiflexion, eversion, or inversion in the ankles. She remains neurologically compromised and is relegated to her wheelchair. She is compromised as far as peroneal sensation (relating to the lateral side of the leg or to the muscles there present), which goes along with the cauda equina syndrome and arachnoiditis which have been established in her ongoing evaluation. Dr. Moore believed appellant's residuals would be significant and assessed them at sixty percent to the body as a whole. On November 4, 1996, Dr. Moore wrote that appellant's neurological residuals remain significant; she is essentially relegated to a wheelchair; and she has sensory deprivation. He did not believe appellant
capable of returning to working activities unless possibly in sedentary activities, but "certainly medication will be required and this would only be on a trial basis." He felt that considering her various neurologic residuals with the foot drop and sensory alterations, an off-work status was appropriate.
In a consultation report dated November 11, 1996, Dr. Ackerman noted that he had nothing further to offer with respect to pain management. He felt that appellant might benefit from an aquatic therapy program with the institution of progression-resistive exercises to attempt to get her out of a wheelchair to a walker with the ultimate goal of increasing her daily activities. Dr. Ackerman felt that appellant may ultimately be a candidate for a subarachnoid morphine drug delivery system.
The administrative law judge (ALJ) found that the preponderance of the evidence shows that appellant has not been rendered permanently and totally disabled, but sustained permanent disability in an amount equal to eighty percent to the body as a whole, including anatomical impairment of twenty-five percent and wage-loss disability of fifty-five percent. He further found that the preponderance of the evidence fails to show that there has been a combination of the effects of a prior disability or impairment with the effects of appellant's compensable injury to produce permanent disability or impairment greater than that resulting from the compensable injury alone, and fails to show that appellant received a bona fide offer of employment at wages equal to or greater than her average weekly wage at the time of her injury. The full Commission affirmed and adopted the ALJ's findings.
[1-3] When reviewing a decision of the Workers' Compensation Commission, we view the evidence and all reasonable inferences deducible therefrom in the light most favorable to the findings of the Commission and affirm that decision if it is supported by substantial evidence. Clark v. Peabody Testing Service, 265 Ark. 489, 579 S.W.2d 360 (1979). Substantial evidence is that relevant evidence which a reasonable mind might accept as adequate to support a conclusion. Harvest Foods v. Washam, 52 Ark. App. 72, 914 S.W.2d 776 (1996). The Commission's decision should not be reversed unless it is clear that fair-minded persons could not have reached the same conclusions if presented with the
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