Opinion
45779.
SUBMITTED NOVEMBER 3, 1970.
DECIDED DECEMBER 2, 1970. REHEARING DENIED DECEMBER 18, 1970.
Workmen's compensation. Catoosa Superior Court. Before Judge Painter.
Wade H. Leonard, for appellant.
Pittman, Kinney, Kemp, Pickell Avrett, L. Hugh Kemp, for appellees.
This is a workmen's compensation case on appeal from the denial of claimant's change of condition application, following a prior award ( Snider v. Liberty Mut. Ins. Co., 119 Ga. App. 118 ( 166 S.E.2d 379)), allowing compensation from October 1, 1966, when the employee ruptured a stomach ulcer in the course of heavy work to March 6, 1967, when it was adjudicated that disability had ceased. It appears from the testimony in this record which was not considered at the first hearing that the claimant was returned for surgery on July 10, 1967, and the lower opening of the stomach enlarged in an effort to reduce gastric acidity, the cause of the ulceration. The surgeon testified that hyperacidity was the cause of the ulcers and that the second ulcer was in the area of the first one, the rupture of which had been the subject matter of the first award.
Whether one or two ulcers were involved, and whether the rupture of the first, which it was established on the first hearing had healed, entered into the proximate cause of the second, are medical questions, and there is medical testimony to uphold the theory adopted by the hearing director. We affirm under the "any evidence" rule.
Judgment affirmed. Hall, P. J., and Evans, J., concur.
SUBMITTED NOVEMBER 3, 1970 — DECIDED DECEMBER 2, 1970 — REHEARING DENIED DECEMBER 18, 1970.