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Facts about Brain Aneurysm and Filing for Disability1. A brain aneurysm affects a blood vessel in the brain. An aneurysm occurs when a place in the wall of a blood vessel weakens and balloons outward. When viewed with imaging machines, an aneurysm usually looks like a cherry and stem. 2. The aneurysm at the weakened blood vessel wall can break open if it becomes large enough, or has enough build up of pressure. With a brain aneurysm, this causes blood to leak into the brain. 3. Brain aneurysms are most likely to occur at the base of the head, where these arteries fork and branch off into other blood vessels. 4. The condition is most common among people of older age, with a history of smoking, alcohol and drug use, high blood pressure, head injury, hardening of arteries and low estrogen due to menopause. Women are twice as likely as men to have brain aneurysms. 5. Brain aneurysms are typically not noticeable unless they leak or rupture. Sometimes a large aneurysm may affect nearby nerves, resulting in eye problems such as pain, blurry or double vision, and a dilated pupil in one eye. One side of the face and one eyelid may also be numb, weak or drooping. 6. A leak or rupture of a brain aneurysm causes a sudden, very painful headache, sometimes with nausea, vomiting, stiffness in the neck, blurry or double vision, light sensitivity, loss of consciousness, seizure, and confusion. This is a life-threatening medical emergency. 7. Two surgical treatment methods for aneurysms that have not ruptured are surgical clipping and endovascular coiling. 8. Clipping involves brain surgery, where a portion of the skull is removed and the aneurysm is located, and then clipped to cut it off from the blood vessel. Coiling is a simpler procedure, where a coil is threaded through the blood vessel to fill the aneurysm, clotting blood flow from the vessel. Can you qualify for disability benefits with this condition? Whether or not you qualify for disability and, as a result, are approved for disability benefits will depend entirely on the information obtained from your medical records. This includes whatever statements may have been obtained from your treating physician (a doctor who has a history of treating your condition and is, therefore, qualified to comment as to your condition and prognosis). It will also depend on the information obtained from your vocational, or work, history if you are an adult, or academic records if you are a minor-age child. The important thing to keep in mind is that the social security administration does not award benefits based on simply having a condition, but, instead, will base an approval or denial on the extent to which a condition causes functional limitations. Functional limitations can be great enough to make work activity not possible (or, for a child, make it impossible to engage in age-appropriate activities). Why are so many disability cases lost at the disability application and reconsideration appeal levels? Speaking as a former Disability Claims Examiner, I can state that there are several reasons: 1) Social Security makes no attempt to obtain a statement from a claimant's treating physician. By contrast, at the hearing level, a claimant and his or her disability attorney will generally obtain and present this type of statement to a judge; 2) Prior to the hearing level, a claimant will not have the opportunity to explain how their condition limits them, nor will their attorney or representative have the opportunity to make a presentation based on the evidence of the case. At the hearing level, of course, this is exactly what happens. And a number of disability representatives will also take such steps even earlier, at the reconsideration appeal level; 3) Disability judges, unlike disability examiners who decides cases at the first two levels of the system, can make independent decisions without being overturned by immediate supervisors--which happens frequently. 
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