Disability for Sickle Cell Disease. Pain crises, hospital stays, and blood counts.

How Social Security evaluates sickle cell disease

The listing can be met in any one of these ways:

• Painful crises requiring intravenous or intramuscular narcotic medication at least six times within 12 months, at least 30 days apart.
• Complications requiring three hospitalizations within a 12-month period, at least 30 days apart, each lasting at least 48 hours.
• Hemoglobin of 7.0 g/dL or less at least three times within 12 months, at least 30 days apart.
• Beta thalassemia major requiring lifelong red blood cell transfusions at least once every 6 weeks.

When no listing is met

Most claims are decided on residual functional capacity: what you can still do in a work setting despite your symptoms. Social Security then asks whether any jobs fit those limits. For sickle cell disease, the limits are chronic pain between crises, fatigue from anemia, days lost to crises, and the need to avoid exertion, cold, heat, and dehydration.

Evidence that matters

• Emergency department records for each crisis, showing the medication given and how.
• Hospital admission and discharge records with dates.
• Hematology records and hemoglobin results over time.
• Records of complications: stroke, acute chest syndrome, organ damage, avascular necrosis.
• A log of crises managed at home.

Ask your doctor to complete the physical impairments form in our free doctor forms. It records your limits in the terms Social Security uses.

Why these claims are denied

• Crises treated at home, leaving no record.
• Emergency visits where only oral medication was given.
• Events closer together than 30 days, which count as one.
• Fatigue and pain between crises not documented.

Crises managed at home

Many adults with sickle cell disease avoid the emergency room. Those crises do not count toward the listing, but they count toward the days of work you would miss. Tell your hematologist about each one so it is in your chart.

If you are 50 or older

Under Social Security’s grid rules, a person limited to sedentary work at 50, or light work at 55, may be found disabled depending on education and past work.

Next steps

If you have been denied, you have 60 days to appeal. See what to do after a denial in Arizona, SSDI in Arizona, and SSI in Arizona. There is no fee unless benefits are awarded.

J Disability Law Firm, PLLC · Joseph J. Duerst, Attorney · 18444 N. 25th Ave, Suite 420, Phoenix, AZ 85023 · (602) 607-0000. This page is general information, not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Every case is different. Past results do not predict the outcome of your case.