External
A medical condition should be treated as a new claim in several circumstances:
- The claim is the first claim for compensation made by the client.
- The client suffers a work-related aggravation of a pre-existing medical condition or of a condition for which liability has earlier been denied.
- The medical condition (whether a new condition or an aggravation) results from an event which has no causal relationship with any other accepted condition of the client.
Example: A soldier with an accepted knee condition suffers a whiplash neck injury in a motor vehicle accident. The accident occurred because another vehicle ran into the client's vehicle from behind, and was not caused by the client's knee problems. The neck injury should be treated as a new claim.