Member Article

Kings Chambers launches Chronic Pain team

Kings Chambers has launched a specialist Chronic Pain Team to provide specialist services in the complex area of chronic pain. The team will be led by Fiona Ashworth, a leading personal injury barrister with 27 years’ experience. For the last 15 years she has specialised in cases involving chronic pain. Along with Fiona Ashworth there are three further experts in personal injury litigation: Helen Trotter, Richard Livingston and Ruth Taylor. Together they will form the new Pain Team acting across the UK. Chronic pain cases include complex regional pain syndrome, chronic pain syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, conversion disorders and somatoform disorders. Any of these can be triggered by trauma, both physical and psychological. What may at first appear to be a relatively minor injury can progress and lead to a severe and long-lasting pain condition. The severity and extent of the symptoms can develop so that the condition becomes far more wide reaching than the original injury and can affect areas that were not involved in the original trauma. Fiona Ashworth said: “It is now well-recognised amongst the medical and legal fraternity that initial minor traumas can develop into painful and disabling conditions which can result in large compensation claims. Claimants can go on to have a total destruction of earning capacity and have needs for aids and appliances and accommodation, sometimes for life. The onus must be on the legal community to take steps to ensure that these cases do not slip through the net and that there are systems in place to accurately identify them. “We have established a dedicated team at Kings Chambers to offer a bespoke service to solicitors and clients to run these difficult and complex cases.” In the UK some seven million people are living with a chronic pain condition. The average time for a satisfactory diagnosis of a chronic pain condition is 2.2 years. Many claimants do not receive a satisfactory diagnosis of their chronic pain condition until some time after the index accident. There is therefore a significant risk that these cases are not identified and that the link between the trauma and the continuing pain condition is missed. This can lead to the claimant being undercompensated and a potential professional negligence action against the solicitors. Kings Chambers practice from chambers in Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds and has a nationwide presence.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Victoria Richardson .