The Board denied the Veteran's claim for service connection for right ear hearing loss due to a lack of evidence showing a current disability and no auditory threshold of 40 dB or greater in any relevant frequency, speech recognition score above 94 percent, or combination of three or more frequencies at 26 dB or higher.
The deciding factor: The VA examiner's opinion was not adequate because it relied on the lack of contemporaneous evidence of hearing loss or apparent noise injury in service and did not address the possibility of delayed onset of hearing loss manifesting at a point in time removed from the original injury. The Board remanded the claims for left ear hearing loss and bilateral tinnitus to obtain an addendum medical opinion.
- Claimed conditions
- right ear hearing loss, left ear hearing loss, bilateral tinnitus
- How they argued it
- Direct service connection
- Exposure basis
- None
- Rating assigned
- None in this decision
- Decision date
- May 29, 2025
- Citation
- A25047760
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.
- Dismissed
The appeal for a compensable rating for left ear hearing loss, service connection for right ear hearing loss, and bilateral vision condition was dismissed. Service connection for hypertension, congestive heart failure, and coronary artery disease was denied.
- Partly granted
The Board granted a 20 percent disability rating for left and right lower extremity radiculopathy from April 3, 2023 onward, but denied higher ratings prior to that date. Service connection was also granted for alcohol use disorder as secondary to PTSD with traumatic brain injury.
- Remanded (sent back)
The Board remands the claim for service connection of left ear hearing loss due to a pre-decisional duty to assist error, as an addendum opinion is necessary to address evidence of in-service hearing loss and convert audiometric testing results from ASA to ISO-ANSI standards.
- Granted
The Board granted service connection for right ear hearing loss, resolving reasonable doubt in the Veteran's favor based on a finding of etiological relation to in-service noise exposure.
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