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Danville School Board v. Chilton3/26/1996
rovide that in an application for review of any award on the ground of change in condition, the burden is on the party alleging such change to prove his allegations by a preponderance of the evidence." Great Atl. & Pac. Tea Co. v. Bateman, 4 Va. App. 459, 464, 359 S.E.2d 98, 101 (1987).
We hold that claimant met her "burden of establishing by a preponderance of the evidence the existence of a disability which was the consequence of the injury by accident." Hungerford Mechanical Corp. v. Hobson, 11 Va. App. 675, 678, 401 S.E.2d 213, 215 (1991). Claimant demonstrated that her back pain began in 1991, immediately after her workplace injury, and that her pain continued uninterrupted from that point. "The testimony of a claimant may be considered in determining causation, especially where the medical testimony is indefinite." Dollar General Store v. Cridlin, 22 Va. App. 171, 468 S.E.2d 152 (1996).
Furthermore, claimant's physicians related the onset of her back pain with her workplace injury , and their reports and records fully related claimant's account of her original injury. An MRI of claimant's spine, conducted on November 22, 1991, only nine days after her injury, revealed mild bulging of the L4-5 and L5-S1 discs, with no herniation. This evidence, in part, provided the commission with credible evidence that claimant's injury caused the bulging and pain. While the physicians' reports may have lacked the desired specificity as to the etiology of claimant's pain, the commission may make awards even "when medical evidence on these matters is inconclusive, indecisive, fragmentary, inconsistent, or even nonexistent." Id.
For these reasons, we affirm the commission's decision.
Affirmed.
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