The Board remands the claims for a heart disability and an acquired psychiatric disorder to correct pre-decisional duty to assist errors, including obtaining better quality copies of service records and providing VA examinations.
The deciding factor: Pre-decisional duty to assist errors in obtaining adequate medical opinions and evidence must be remedied before adjudicating the claims.
- Claimed conditions
- Heart disability
- How they argued it
- Reopened with new and material evidence
- Exposure basis
- Agent Orange / herbicides
- Rating assigned
- None in this decision
- Decision date
- June 30, 2025
- Citation
- A25056253
Veterans Law Judge
Decisions by this judge: 1,990 · Granted: 35% (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 A25056253.
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 Board denied service connection for a heart disability, finding that the Veteran's current heart diagnoses are not related to his military service.
- Denied
The Veteran's claim for an effective date prior to March 2, 2015, for TDIU was denied as the evidence did not show actual worsening within one year prior to his March 2, 2015, claim.
- Remanded (sent back)
The Board has denied service connection for a right shoulder disability and remanded the case for further action on heart disability. The decision regarding right shoulder disability is that it was not incurred in or aggravated by service.
- Denied
The Board denied the Veteran's request to reopen his claim for service connection for a heart disability, claiming chest pains. The May 1997 rating decision found that new and material evidence was not submitted within the required timeframe.
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