The Veteran's appeals for service connection for type II diabetes mellitus and a cardiovascular disorder have been remanded due to the need to obtain additional VA treatment records from the VistA imaging system.
The deciding factor: Additional medical records are needed to support or refute the Veteran's claims.
- Claimed conditions
- type II diabetes mellitus (DM), cardiovascular disorder
- How they argued it
- Direct service connection
- Exposure basis
- None
- Rating assigned
- None in this decision
- Decision date
- October 8, 2020
- Citation
- 20065714
Veterans Law Judge
Decisions by this judge: 2,162 · Granted: 21% (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 20065714.
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.
- Granted
The Veteran's tinnitus is granted as service connected. The issues of foot disability and cardiovascular disorder are remanded for additional development.
- Granted
The Veteran's heart conditions, including CAD, MI, atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, congestive heart failure, supraventricular arrhythmia, and CABG are granted as presumed due to herbicide exposure. DM is also granted. Peripheral neuropathy of the LLE, RLE, LUE, and RUE is granted secondary to DM.
- Denied
The Board denied the Veteran's claims of service connection for diabetes mellitus, type I; muscle and joint pains with spasms; chronic fatigue syndrome; and cardiovascular disorder. The Board found that there was no current disability related to these conditions, nor did they find a causal relationship between any service-connected disabilities and these conditions.
- Granted
The Veteran's hypertension, type II diabetes mellitus (DM), and migraine headaches are all granted as service-connected. The hypertension is considered direct service connection due to the preexisting condition not being aggravated by service. Type II diabetes mellitus (DM) is found to have started during service based on post-service medical records showing progression from impaired fasting glucose to a confirmed diagnosis of DM II. Migraine headaches are also granted as they were first diagnosed during active military service and linked to in-service noise exposure.
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