Appellant, Emerson Electric, brings this appeal challenging a decision of the Workers’ Compensation Commission awarding temporary total disability benefits for the period between January 27, 1998, and April 13, 1998. On appeal, appellant argues the following: the evidence was insufficient to support a twenty-six percent impairment rating; the evidence was insufficient to support a fifty-percent wage loss; and the evidence was insufficient to support temporary total disability benefits for the period between January 27, 1998, and April 13, 1998. Appellee cross-appeals on the issue of permanent total disability benefits. We affirm on direct appeal and on cross-appeal.
Appellee, Vera Gaston, has been employed by appellant for thirty-one years. Around 1992, appellee was transferred to the winding department. The winding department was an area of appellant’s plant in which varnish was coated onto the motor product. Appellee became exposed to varnish vats, varnish ovens, Sanders, and grinders, and she began experiencing respiratory difficulties for which she sought medical treatment.
Appellee first saw her family physician, who referred her to Dr. Robert Sanders, a pulmonary specialist. Dr. Sanders diagnosed appellee with occupational asthma, took her off work, and assessed her with a permanent-impairment rating of one hundred percent to the body as a whole. On August 21, 1998, appellee saw Dr. Joseph Bates. After performing a series of tests, Dr. Bates concluded that appellee had no objective abnormalities, normal pulmonary function, and assessed a permanent impairment rating of zero percent. On October 27, 1998, Dr. Sanders performed another series of tests, which resulted in the same diagnosis, a permanent-impairment rating of one hundred percent as to the body as a whole. On January 14, 1999, another physician, Dr. Paula Anderson, performed a series of tests on appellee and concluded that appellee had not sustained any permanent physical impairment to her pulmonary function.
The Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) found that appellee’s asthma was a compensable occupational disease and awarded additional wage-loss benefits in the amount of fifty percent. The Commission remanded the claim to the ALJ for more adequate findings on the issues of objective medical findings and permanent physical impairment. In a supplemental opinion, the ALJ found that the pulmonary tests performed by the treating physician were objective and that appellee sustained a twenty-six percent permanent physical impairment to the body as a whole in addition to other benefits in the previous opinion. The Commission affirmed the findings of the ALJ in the original and supplemental opinion. From that decision comes this appeal.
We affirm the Commission if its decision is supported by substantial evidence; substantial evidence is such relevant evidence as a reasonable mind might accept as adequate to support a conclusion. Air Compressor Equip. v. Sword,
First, appellant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence in regard to the twenty-six percent impairment rating awarded by the Commission. Appellant asserts that there are two reasons that the validity of the rating is not supported by substantial evidence. First, the rating was not based on objective medical findings. Instead, it was based on medical tests which could have come under the voluntary control of the appellee. Second, in assigning the twenty-six percent impairment rating, the ALJ failed to consider all relevant information as required by the AMA Guides in that the ALJ failed to consider appellee’s physical condition and ignored two impairment ratings assigned by physicians who did consider this information.
Arkansas Code Annotated section ll-9-704(c)(l)(B) (Repl. 1996) states that “any determination of the existence or extent of physical impairment shall be supported by objective and measurable physical or mental findings.” Moreover, Arkansas Code Annotated section ll-9-102(16)(A)(i) (Repl. 1996) provides that “ ‘objective findings’ are those findings which cannot come under the voluntary control of the patient.” During appellee’s treatment, both Dr. Sanders and Dr. Bates performed pulmonary-function testing. Both stated in their depositions that the test results depend on the patient giving maximum effort. Clearly, a patient’s breathing is at least partially within his or her control and potentially subject to manipulation. However, both doctors opined that appellee was giving maximum effort throughout her testing. Moreover, Dr. Sanders testified as to several factors which help determine whether the patient was performing maximal exercise. Two of those factors included studying the steady rise in oxygen-consumption data to see when the data reaches a plateau and studying the respiratory exchange ratio on the exercise test and the bicarbonate drop in the blood gas obtained at peak exercise to determine when the patient has become anaerobic. Thus, the pulmonary-function testing is clearly an objective test due to the objective data the test produces, in spite of the fact that a patient is at least partially able to control his or her breathing. We find that the Commission was correct in concluding that the oxygen-consumption data and the bicarbonate-drop data were both objective chemical data, which provide qualitative and quantitative analysis to determine whether the patient has in fact expended maximum effort during exercise, and that the chemical analysis itself is not under the voluntary control of the patient.
Appellant also challenges the twenty-six percent impairment rating because the ALJ failed to consider appellee’s physical condition and ignored two impairment ratings assigned by physicians who did consider this information. Contrary to appellant’s assertion, the specific degree of impairment was determined primarily by the physicians’ testimony, even though it was conflicting. The Commission has the duty of weighing medical evidence and, if the evidence is conflicting, its resolution is a question of fact for the Commission. University of Ark. Med. Sciences v. Hart,
Second, appellant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence as to the fifty-percent wage loss awarded by the Commission. The wage-loss factor is the extent to which a compensable injury has affected the claimant’s ability to earn a livelihood. Eckhardt v. Wills Shaw Express, Inc.,
Third, appellant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence as to the temporary total disability benefits for the period between January 27, 1998, and April 13, 1998. Temporary total disability is that period within the healing period in which an employee suffers a total incapacity to earn wages. Carroll Gen. Hosp. v. Green,
On cross-appeal, appellee asserts that she has proven by a preponderance of the evidence that she is permanently totally disabled based on Dr. Sanders’s one hundred percent impairment rating; however, the Commission has the authority to accept or reject medical opinions. See Estridge v. Waste Management,
Pursuant to the Commission’s authority, it heard and weighed the conflicting evidence presented in this case and gave the evidence the weight it deemed appropriate. We hold that the Commission’s decision was supported by substantial evidence and affirm on direct appeal and on cross-appeal.