The Board has remanded the claims for service connection for arthritis of the right and left hips, as secondary to a right knee condition due to insufficient previous opinions. The Veteran's representative requested an addendum opinion regarding obesity and its relation to his hip conditions.
The deciding factor: The VA examiner failed to adequately consider the treatment records indicating the Veteran’s weight gain prior to his spinal surgery in May 2012, and did not address whether obesity was an intermediate step between his service-connected right knee condition and bilateral hip conditions.
- Claimed conditions
- arthritis of the right hip, arthritis of the left hip
- How they argued it
- Direct service connection
- Exposure basis
- None
- Rating assigned
- None in this decision
- Decision date
- December 23, 2020
- Citation
- 20080691
Veterans Law Judge
Decisions by this judge: 1,874 · Granted: 33% (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 20080691.
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 Veteran's service-connected disabilities do not meet the criteria for a special home adaptation grant as they do not result in anatomical loss or use of both hands, blindness in both eyes, deep partial thickness burns, full thickness or subdermal burns, or residuals of an inhalation injury.
- Partly granted
The Board granted service connection for tinnitus and remanded the claims for an acquired psychiatric disability, a sleep disorder, type two diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease, vertigo, hypertension, migraine headaches, arthritis of various joints, and kidney disease.
- Partly granted
The veteran's service connection for arthritis in the hips, knees, and lumbar spine was granted. Other conditions were remanded for further evaluation.
- Remanded (sent back)
The Board has remanded the claims for service connection for arthritis of the neck, left hip, and bilateral knees due to a lack of a VA examination and opinion regarding the nature and etiology of these conditions. The Veteran claims his current disabilities are secondary to his service-connected peripheral neuropathy of the lower extremities.
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