Civil Rights — medical treatment

Listen to this article

United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Civil

Civil Rights — medical treatment — deliberate indifference

A prisoner’s three-week period without hypertension medication is insufficient to warrant a deliberate indifference claim.

“Unless our plaintiff has some serious medical condition unmentioned in the briefs or record, the slight elevation above the normal range that he may have experienced during a three-week period (we cannot say, on the basis of a single reading, that he did experience it) would not have produced the symptoms of which he complains or have endangered his long-term health. ‘The prolonged elevation of either the systolic or the diastolic blood pressure causes damage. If mildly elevated over a long period of time, or if highly elevated over a short period of time, damage results to a variety of different “target” organs in the body, primarily due to arterial injury.’ 2 Dan J. Tennenhouse, Attorneys Medical Deskbook § 24:4 (4th ed. 2012) (emphasis added); see also Norman M. Kaplan, Clinical Hypertension 124–25 (9th ed. 2006); Cleveland Clinic, ‘Pulmonary Hypertension: Causes, Symptoms, Diagnosis, Treatment,’ http://my.clevelandcli nic.org/disorders/pulmonary_hypertension/hic_pulmonary_ hypertension_causes_symptoms_diagnosis_treatment.aspx. The plaintiff experienced not highly elevated blood pressure for a short time or mildly elevated blood pressure for a long time, but mildly elevated blood pressure for a short time.”

Affirmed.

12-2682 Jackson v. Pollion

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, Gilbert, J., Posner, J.