Hearing loss VA claim denied or under-rated?

What it is and how the VA sees it: "Hearing loss" means your ears no longer pick up sounds the way they should, often after loud noise, illness, or injury. The VA does not count every drop in hearing as a disability. Under its rules, hearing loss only counts as a disability for VA purposes when a hearing test shows the sound level (auditory threshold) in any of the frequencies 500, 1000, 2000, 3000, or 4000 Hertz is 40 decibels or greater; or the thresholds for at least three of those frequencies are 26 decibels or greater; or speech recognition scores using the Maryland CNC test are less than 94 percent. The exam must be done by a state-licensed audiologist and must include both a controlled speech discrimination (Maryland CNC) test and a puretone audiometry test, and it is done without hearing aids.

The diagnostic code and what raises the rating: The VA rates hearing loss under Diagnostic Code 6100. The rating is not a guess — it comes straight from your test numbers. The VA takes your "puretone threshold average" (the average of your thresholds at 1000, 2000, 3000, and 4000 Hertz) and your speech discrimination score and uses Table VI to find a Roman numeral (I through XI) for each ear. Then it combines the numeral for your better ear and your poorer ear on Table VII to get a percentage. In plain terms, the worse your test numbers, the higher the Roman numerals, and the higher the percentage can climb. For unusual hearing patterns — for example, very high thresholds across all four key frequencies, or a sharp drop between 1000 and 2000 Hertz — special rules let the VA use whichever table gives the higher numeral, which can raise the result.

Service connection and exposure pathways: Hearing loss is most often service-connected the direct way — by showing the loss is linked to noise or injury during service. It is not on the special exposure lists (such as Agent Orange or the PACT Act burn-pit lists) that automatically remove the nexus burden for certain illnesses. However, chronic diseases can qualify for a built-in (presumptive) link when the disease shows up to a degree of 10 percent or more within 1 year of leaving service, and the VA keeps a list of chronic diseases for this rule, including "other organic diseases of the nervous system." That can matter for some types of nerve-related hearing loss, so the exam findings and timing are important. This is general educational information about how the VA's rules work — it is not legal advice and it is not a VA decision about your claim.