The Board denied the Veteran's claim for service connection for trigeminal neuralgia, finding that there was no evidence of a current disability related to active duty and assigning more weight to the VA examiner's opinion than to the Veteran's lay statements.
The deciding factor: The VA examiner concluded that the Veteran's trigeminal neuralgia was not causally related to service due to lack of treatment in service and medical literature indicating no cause-and-effect relationship with Agent Orange exposure.
- Claimed conditions
- trigeminal neuralgia
- How they argued it
- Direct service connection
- Exposure basis
- None
- Rating assigned
- None in this decision
- Decision date
- December 1, 2021
- Citation
- 21071885
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 21071885.
What this means for you
A denial is a starting point, not the end of the road. You can see why this claim fell short — and, if you are still inside the one-year window, the appeal lanes that may remain open to you.
What you can do next
Related decisions
Other Board decisions on a similar condition or argued the same way.
- Partly granted
The Board granted initial ratings of 30 percent for trigeminal neuralgia and 40 percent for both left and right lower extremity radiculopathy, but denied an increased rating for contact dermatitis. An earlier effective date was also granted for the right lower extremity radiculopathy.
- Remanded (sent back)
The Board remands the appeal for further development, including obtaining relevant private treatment records and reexamining service-connected residuals of TBI.
- Remanded (sent back)
The Board remands the claim for a headache disability to include trigeminal neuralgia; temple headaches; non intractable headaches, unspecified chronicity pattern; unspecified headache type; migraines; and temporal arteritis as further development is required.
- Granted
The Board granted service connection for trigeminal neuralgia, resolving the benefit of the doubt in favor of the Veteran.
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