The Board has remanded the case for further development, including obtaining a medical opinion regarding whether the veteran's cause of death is related to his exposure to Agent Orange during service.
The deciding factor: The VA examiner and oncologist have provided opinions suggesting a possible link between the veteran's exposure to Agent Orange and his fatal cancer. The Board must now obtain an expert medical opinion on this issue.
- Claimed conditions
- metastatic gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma
- How they argued it
- Secondary to another service-connected condition
- Exposure basis
- Agent Orange / herbicides
- Rating assigned
- None in this decision
- Decision date
- October 5, 2006
- Citation
- 0631288
Veterans Law Judge
Decisions by this judge: 1,514 · Granted: 19% (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 0631288.
What this means for you
A remand is not a loss. The Board sent the case back for more development — often a new exam or missing records — before making a final decision. Many remands later end in a grant, and the decision spells out exactly what the Board wanted to see.
What you can do next
Related decisions
Other Board decisions on a similar condition or argued the same way.
- Denied
The Board denied the claim for service connection for cause of death, finding that there was no evidence linking the Veteran's death to his active military service or any service-connected conditions.
- Denied
The Veteran's cause of death, metastatic gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma, is not related to his service or any in-service injury or disease. The Board found no nexus between the Veteran’s stomach cancer and active duty.
- Granted
The Board has determined that the Veteran's headaches are at least as likely as not caused by his service-connected traumatic brain injury, and thus grants service connection for this condition.
- Remanded (sent back)
The Board has remanded the claims for service connection for hypertension and peripheral neuropathy of the bilateral upper and lower extremities due to insufficient medical opinions regarding their etiology.
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