The Board denied the veteran's claim for service connection as his degenerative disc disease of the lumbosacral spine was not incurred or aggravated in his active duty service and is not presumed to be related.
The deciding factor: The medical opinion concluded that the current widespread extensive multilevel disease present in the veteran's spine would unlikely be caused from a single incident that occurred in the 1960s, making it highly unlikely that the one incident was severe enough to cause his current lumbosacral disorders.
- Claimed conditions
- Degenerative Disc Disease (DDD) of the lumbosacral spine
- How they argued it
- Direct service connection
- Exposure basis
- None
- Rating assigned
- None in this decision
- Decision date
- September 21, 2006
- Citation
- 0629915
Veterans Law Judge
Decisions by this judge: 1,177 · Granted: 24% (granted or partly granted, in the vetted decisions on this site)
Judge attribution: 2025 complete; earlier years partial.
This is a plain-language summary generated by AI from a public Board of Veterans’ Appeals decision. It can contain errors — always verify against the original. Look up the original decision on VA.gov (opens in a new tab) using citation 0629915.
What this means for you
A denial is a starting point, not the end of the road. You can see why this claim fell short — and, if you are still inside the one-year window, the appeal lanes that may remain open to you.
What you can do next
Related decisions
Other Board decisions on a similar condition or argued the same way.
- Granted
The Veteran's DDD of the lumbosacral spine is now rated at 40 percent effective December 22, 2010.
- Remanded (sent back)
The Board vacated part of its decision denying a rating in excess of 10 percent for service-connected DDD of the lumbosacral spine, and remanded it due to a lack of contemporaneous examination. The claim is now pending again.
- Partly granted
The Veteran was awarded a 10% rating for DDD of the lumbosacral spine effective August 16, 2018. However, he did not receive proper notice of a scheduled VA examination in June 2000 and his service connection claim is still pending.
- Granted
The Veteran's DDD of the lumbosacral spine is granted a higher evaluation to 40 percent. The evaluations for bilateral lower extremity radiculopathy remain at 10 percent.
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