work comp death

my husband was doing physical therapy after a knee surgery do to a fall at work. While he was at this therapy which was very rigorous he collapsed from a heart attack. What is work comp responsible for?

[Bricks41]

First off, if he did pass as I get from the title, I am very sorry...

To answer your question, I do not believe Worker's Compensation would include a death during physical therapy. This is mainly because his possible heart condition was not directly related to the work accident.

He had an ekg before his surgery that showed possible heart problems (which we did not know about until after his death). He had no previous problems that would lead us to suspect heart problems. They put him on bicycles & stair steppers which if the doctor prescribing the therapy (he did the surgery too) would have included information from this ekg (my doctor just read it for me yesterday) to the therapist they probably wouldn't have had him doing such arobic activities. Maybe I would have had another day, week, month, or year, I would take even another hour.

[Bricks41]

I am terribly sorry to hear that. I'm sure the doctor was aware of the potential problem and if he felt therapy would have been an issue, he would make those recommendations. It is very difficult to say, one way or the other, that even if he did not have the rigorous therapy, it wouldn't have still shown up at the same time.

From my professional experience, this will be separate from the original injury. Worker's Compensation should not change or cover this unfortunate incident.

You may look into the doctor to see if there was neglegence on his/her part.

thank you for responding.

I'm not a lawyer, but I can say that I think you would have to prove the work injury as the CAUSE of the heart attack. It is the fallacy of false cause to assume something is the cause of another thing just because they co-exist. B comes after A, but A is not the case of B. You would have to prove the work injury as the cause. And I think this would be difficult to do medically and logically. But I'm not a lawyer. I just understand logic.

Correction: A is not the cause of B.