The Board remanded the veteran's claims for service connection of peripheral neuropathy in both upper and lower extremities due to inadequate medical opinions. The Board will obtain a new opinion to determine if the condition is related to military service, including exposure to herbicide agents.
The deciding factor: The April 2024 VA opinion was deemed inadequate because it did not specify which toxic exposures were believed to have caused the veteran's peripheral neuropathy and lacked supporting medical literature.
- Claimed conditions
- peripheral neuropathy (PN) of the bilateral upper extremities, peripheral neuropathy (PN) of the bilateral lower extremities
- How they argued it
- Direct service connection
- Exposure basis
- Agent Orange / herbicides
- Rating assigned
- None in this decision
- Decision date
- January 16, 2025
- Citation
- A25004029
Veterans Law Judge
Decisions by this judge: 1,242 · Granted: 27% (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 A25004029.
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.
- Partly granted
The Board denied service connection for a disability claimed as depleted uranium and remanded the claims for peripheral neuropathy, diabetes mellitus, an eye disorder, a prostate disorder, and a gastrointestinal disorder.
- Granted
Service connection for headaches is denied.,Service connection for OSA is granted on a secondary basis to PTSD.,The effective date of service connection for PTSD is July 15, 2013.,The effective date of service connection for tinnitus is July 15, 2013.,The effective date of service connection for DMII with ED is November 15, 2012.,The effective date of service connection for PN of the bilateral lower extremities is September 12, 2014.
- Denied
The Board denied the veteran's claims for increased ratings for his service-connected lumbar myositis, psychoneurosis and conversion hysteria, residuals of shrapnel wounds of the left thigh and pelvis with retained foreign bodies and scars, and residuals of shell fragment wounds of the right thigh and left leg. The veteran was also denied entitlement to a total disability rating based on individual unemployability due to service-connected disabilities.
- Denied
The Board denied the Veteran's claim for an initial evaluation in excess of 10 percent for his service-connected coronary artery disease, finding that the evidence did not support a higher rating based on the severity of his condition.
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