The Board remands the claims for service connection for sinusitis/rhinitis and obstructive sleep apnea as additional development is needed.
The deciding factor: Remand is required due to a duty to assist error, including an inadequate VA examination and unclear toxic exposure records.
- Claimed conditions
- obstructive sleep apnea (sleep apnea), sinusitis/rhinitis
- How they argued it
- Direct service connection
- Exposure basis
- None
- Rating assigned
- None in this decision
- Decision date
- April 30, 2025
- Citation
- A25039724
Veterans Law Judge
Decisions by this judge: 785 · Granted: 34% (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 A25039724.
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.
- Remanded (sent back)
The Board has remanded the Veteran's claims for service connection and evaluation of obstructive sleep apnea and asbestosis with COPD due to duty to assist errors, inadequate examinations, and other procedural issues.
- Remanded (sent back)
The Board has remanded the Veteran's claims for obstructive sleep apnea, left hip pain, and right foot pain due to potential errors in pre-decisional duty to assist. The Veteran is presumed sound at the time of her entrance into active service, so any pre-existing conditions must be disregarded. An addendum opinion is needed regarding whether these conditions are related to service or service-connected conditions.
- Granted
The Board has determined that the Veteran's current sleep apnea disability is at least as likely as not caused by his service-connected chronic sinusitis, and thus grants entitlement to service connection for sleep apnea as secondary to chronic sinusitis.
- Granted
The Veteran's initial 10 percent rating for migraines is granted, while a compensable rating for bilateral hearing loss is denied. Service connection is granted for pes planus, but not for degenerative disease of the lumbar spine, bilateral knee pain, hypertension, GERD, or sleep apnea and generalized anxiety disorder.
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