The Board has remanded the case due to insufficient evidence regarding the Veteran's exposure to herbicide agents and the onset of his conditions during service. The Appellant is seeking service connection for her husband's cause of death, which includes ankylosing spondylitis and pulmonary fibrosis.
The deciding factor: Further medical evaluation is needed to determine if the Veteran's conditions are related to his service, including exposure to herbicide agents in Vietnam and environmental exposures during service in Southwest Asia.
- Claimed conditions
- ankylosing spondylitis, pulmonary fibrosis
- How they argued it
- Not specified
- Exposure basis
- None
- Rating assigned
- None in this decision
- Decision date
- August 23, 2019
- Citation
- 19165782
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 19165782.
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.
- Partly granted
The Board denied an earlier effective date for the grant of a 70 percent rating for PTSD and granted an effective date of May 31, 2004, but no earlier, for the award of a total disability rating based on individual unemployability due to service-connected disabilities (TDIU).
- Granted
The Board granted service connection for pulmonary fibrosis, finding it to be related to the Veteran's exposure to herbicide agents during his service in Vietnam.
- Remanded (sent back)
The Board remands the claim for service connection of a lung disability, claimed as pulmonary fibrosis, for further development and evidence review.
- Denied
The Board denied the Veteran's claim for a total disability rating based on individual unemployability (TDIU) due to service-connected disabilities, finding that the evidence did not support a conclusion that his service-connected conditions prevented him from securing or following substantially gainful employment.
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