The Board has determined that the Veteran's claims for service connection for right upper extremity and left upper extremity nerve disorders are remanded due to inadequate medical opinions provided by VA examiners.
The deciding factor: The VA examiners did not provide sufficient rationale in their opinions, failing to distinguish between causation and aggravation as separate concepts and providing unclear etiology conclusions.
- Claimed conditions
- residuals of facial surgery, right upper extremity nerve disorder, left upper extremity nerve disorder
- How they argued it
- Direct service connection
- Exposure basis
- None
- Rating assigned
- None in this decision
- Decision date
- November 15, 2023
- Citation
- 23061020
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 23061020.
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.
- Dismissed
The Veteran withdrew his appeal in February 2023, and the Board dismissed the case.
- Remanded (sent back)
The Board remands the claims for service connection for bilateral upper and lower extremity nerve disorders to obtain an addendum opinion regarding their relationship to the Veteran's service-connected ulcerative colitis and lumbar spine disability.
- Dismissed
The veteran withdrew his appeals for service connection for multiple conditions, and the Board has no further jurisdiction to consider these matters.
- Partly granted
The Board granted service connection for a right and left upper extremity nerve disorder as secondary to the service-connected cervical spine disability, but remanded the claim for hypertension due to an incomplete medical opinion.
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