The Board has remanded the Veteran's claims for service connection due to insufficient evidence in the record regarding his claimed cervical spine disability, bilateral radiculopathy, and headaches. The VA is instructed to schedule the Veteran for a VA examination to evaluate these claims.
The deciding factor: The VA examiner needs to provide an opinion on whether the Veteran’s current disabilities are related to service or were aggravated by service.
- Claimed conditions
- Degenerative disc disease of the cervical spine, Cervical radiculopathy left upper extremity, Cervical radiculopathy right upper extremity, Tension headaches
- How they argued it
- Direct service connection
- Exposure basis
- None
- Rating
- Not verified here — check the original decision
- Decision date
- May 6, 2019
- Citation
- 19134868
Veterans Law Judge
Decisions by this judge: 1,726 · Granted: 19% (granted or partly granted, in the indexed 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. Read the original VA decision (opens in a new tab) using citation 19134868.
What this means for you
A remand sends an issue back for more development, often a new examination or missing records. It does not award the benefit or decide the final outcome. The original decision explains the additional work ordered.
What you can do next
Related decisions
Other Board decisions on a similar condition or argued the same way.
- Denied
The Board denied service connection for degenerative disc disease of the cervical spine, finding that there is no nexus between the current disability and active duty service.
- Granted
The Veteran's initial evaluation for tension headaches to include migraines is granted, with a rating of 50 percent effective from May 23, 2023.
- Remanded (sent back)
The Board has remanded the claims for service connection due to a duty to assist error, specifically regarding whether the Veteran's current conditions are aggravated by his service-connected DDD of the lumbosacral spine. The AOJ is required to obtain new medical opinions addressing this issue.
- Remanded (sent back)
The Veteran's claim for a compensable disability rating for tension and migraine headaches is remanded due to the inadequacy of the September 2020 VA examination report, which did not consider the ameliorative effects of medication.
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