Plastic Surgery for Burns: Can I Receive Compensation?
Severe burns are a painful, disfiguring injury. If you need plastic surgery to reduce or disguise the scars left from a burn injury, can you be compensated for the expense?
Compensable Injuries
If you’re like most people, you probably associate the term “plastic surgery” with elective procedures such as facelifts and tummy tucks. Deciding to undergo such a procedure after a disfiguring injury such as a major burn is still elective—that is, it’s the burn victim’s choice—but the surgery may be compensable in such an instance.
Why? In most personal injury cases, where the careless or reckless behavior of one party has caused losses for another, damages can include the following losses:
- Medical expenses
- Lost wages
- Pain and suffering
- Emotional anguish
- Loss of enjoyment of life
Enjoyment of Life
After a serious burn injury, particularly to the face, your enjoyment of life may be severely reduced. The emotional anguish of a disfiguring injury adds to the pain and suffering of the injury itself. Since these are compensable losses, medical treatment that would reduce these losses may also be compensable.
Have You Suffered Disfiguring Burns?
If you’ve suffered serious burns or other disfiguring injury because of someone’s careless actions, you don’t have to suffer in silence. The law may be able to help you collect compensation to pay for reconstructive surgery or other treatments to lessen your scarring or correct other disfigurement.
Working with a caring, experienced personal injury lawyer may help you to maximize any settlement you’re entitled to for your disfiguring burn injury. Treatment doesn’t have to be life-saving to be compensable. You deserve the best possible future after your injury, and the right lawyer may be able to help.