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Injuries to your spinal cord that happen during your military service can lead to a medical condition known as radiculopathy. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (the VA) recognizes disabilities for radiculopathy for veterans’ disability benefits claim purposes.
The VA disability lawyers at Stone Rose Law can help you to know whether you have a claim for service-connected radiculopathy VA benefits, and can help you to apply for the best possible VA disability rating for radiculopathy. Call (480) 498-8998 for a free consultation today.
The VA rates radiculopathy disabilities in 10 percent increments. Generally speaking, you can anticipate the following disability ratings to apply depending on whether your symptoms are mild, moderate, severe, or complete:
The VA disability rating for sciatica can be up to 80 percent. The highest rating you can receive for radiculopathy is 90 percent based on complete paralysis.
If you lose the use of a hand or foot to the extent that it no longer functions effectively compared to using a prosthetic device, then you may qualify for Special Monthly Compensation or SMC.
The bilateral factor can apply when you suffer a disabling condition on both sides of your body, such as both legs or both arms. Note that the bilateral factor does not apply to upper and lower body combinations, like an arm and a leg.
The rationale behind the bilateral factor is that when both limbs are disabled, such as both legs, it is harder for you to compensate for an injury to one limb by relying on the other.
In some cases, even if your single or combined VA rating is less than 100 percent, you can still potentially qualify for total disability benefits through Total Disability for Individual Unemployability, or TDIU.
There are three ways you can qualify for TDIU benefits when you have a radiculopathy disability:
The medical term Radiculopathy includes a variety of spinal cord conditions, commonly caused by back conditions like herniated discs, stenosis, and bone spurs that pinch a nerve root in your cervical, thoracic, or lumbar spine.
This compressed nerve root can cause you to experience pain and discomfort, often described as a feeling of numbness, tingling, or weakness.
How you experience radiculopathy depends on the location of the underlying nerve pinching and how severe its nature is.
General symptoms of radiculopathy include:
Not everyone experiences all of these symptoms, and sometimes symptoms come and go. Other people are seemingly asymptomatic, showing no outward symptoms of radiculopathy even though they have the condition.
It is one thing to say that radiculopathy can cause you pain and discomfort as symptoms. But when you realize what that pain and discomfort can do to restrict how you live your life, it is easy to see why the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (the VA) recognizes radiculopathy-related conditions as compensable disabilities.
For example, the pain of radiculopathy can make activities you usually do not think twice about hard to do: if the symptoms are severe enough, you can have trouble driving a car, or performing household activities, or even taking care of your basic personal needs.
These can also affect how you interact with people, including your family, friends, and coworkers.
In more serious cases, radiculopathy symptoms can interfere with your ability to work.
It is helpful to think of categorizing the different kinds of radiculopathy along two types of categories.
The first category is what part of the spine is affected. The second category is to identify the kind of nerve damage at the site of the spinal injury.
We look at each of these categories next.
Doctors divide your spine into three sections:
A radiculopathy injury can occur in any of these three sections. So, you can be diagnosed with cervical radiculopathy, thoracic radiculopathy, or lumbar radiculopathy. The section where the injury happens will often show symptoms distinct from an injury to the other sections.
Cervical radiculopathy can result from a pinched nerve in your neck. Symptoms of cervical radiculopathy affect your shoulders, arms, hands, and fingers.
Cervical radiculopathy is diagnosed under codes 8510, 8610, and 8710.
A pinched nerve in your middle back can lead to this condition, which is the least common of the three kinds of radiculopathy. Symptoms will affect your chest area.
The diagnostic codes for thoracic radiculopathy are the same as those for cervical radiculopathy.
Lower back injuries are also known as sciatica, because the sciatic nerve that is usually injured in this area of your spine is the sciatic nerve. An injury to your lumbar spine will affect your hips and legs. It can also lead to incontinence.
This kind of injury is the most common form of radiculopathy in veterans.
Lumbar radiculopathy is diagnosed under codes 8520, 8620, and 8720.
In addition to the location on the spine, the other factor that goes into a diagnosis of radiculopathy is the nature of the nerve injury. Here, there are three kinds of injury. In increasing severity, they are neuralgia, neuritis, and paralysis.
Neuralgia is the medical term that describes a severe shooting pain from a damaged or irritated nerve. The pain can be mild to moderate:
Neuritis describes the inflammation that happens to a pinched or otherwise injured nerve. Neuritis symptoms include pain, tenderness, numbness, weakness, and impaired circulation.
Neuritis symptoms can be mild, moderate, or severe:
Paralysis is what happens when a nerve is partly or completely unable to send signals for affected muscles to move.
Paralysis symptoms can be incomplete or complete, as well as mild, moderate, or severe:
The direct cause of radiculopathy is usually an injury or other condition that affects one or more vertebrae in your spine, which in turn causes inflammation or other physical pinching of the nerve root.
Some of the more common causes of radiculopathy include:
Your active duty service could have contributed to one of these causes of radiculopathy. This is particularly true if you served in the combat arms, which can often require you to engage in strenuous and traumatic activities like jumping, lifting, pushing, and pulling.
A motor vehicle accident during your time in service can also lead to an injury to your spine.
No diagnostic code exists specifically for radiculopathy.
Instead, the VA will assess the conditions you are suffering from as part of radiculopathy and assign a specific diagnostic code based on the affected nerves and the severity of your symptoms.
To qualify for veterans’ disability benefits for radiculopathy, you will need to do all of the following:
Your treating physician will likely use one or more relevant diagnostic tests to establish your radiculopathy condition. These can include X-rays, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and commuted tomography or CT scans.
In addition, the VA may require you to attend a compensation and pension (C&P) examination by a VA examiner, which can include more diagnostic tests and a medical exam.
Your radiculopathy condition can result as a primary result of an in-service event. Or, in some situations, it can come from another cause.
Here are some ways that you can experience radiculopathy indirectly.
When you entered military service you may have already been suffering from a condition that, although it did not prevent your entry into service and did not at the time rise to the level of radiculopathy, becomes worse because of your conditions of service.
The preexisting condition must have been noted in your entrance exam into the military, and your military medical records should reflect a worsening of the condition during your service.
It is not necessary to show a link to an in-service event to claim an aggravated pre-existing condition, only that the worsening of the condition happened during your service.
A secondary disability claim is one based on an existing, VA-recognized direct service-connected condition. The VA rates secondary conditions and secondary service connection compensation the same way it does with primary service-connected conditions.
When we consider the causes of radiculopathy, it becomes plain that it does not originate by itself but is often caused by some other injury or medical condition. This makes radiculopathy a significant source of secondary service connection disability benefit claims.
Here are some examples of VA disabilities that can be the basis of a secondary claim for radiculopathy:
Making a VA disability benefits claim for service-connected disabilities begins with collecting the evidence you will need to support your benefits application.
This includes your military records of treatment if any exist, your current medical diagnosis for radiculopathy and records of treatment, supporting letters from people who are in a position to observe the effects of the disabling condition on your day-to-day activities and your employment.
If you have VA exam results from a C&P examination, this can also be an important part of your application record.
You can file your disability benefits application with the VA up to 180 days before your discharge, or at any time following your discharge
The VA does not always approve veterans’ initial disability claims. Overall, the VA denies up to one-third of such applications.
There are many reasons why the VA might deny your disability benefits claim for radiculopathy. For example, the VA may conclude that your evidence was not enough to prove a disability or to show that it is service-connected.
Sometimes, you might make a mistake in the application, such as filing a wrong form, which can result in an initial denial.
Fortunately, you can appeal a VA claim denial in one of three ways: making a supplemental claim, requesting a higher-level review, or requesting a formal board appeal.
An experienced VA disability benefits attorney can help you understand your appeal options if your initial claim is denied or if you believe you should receive a higher rating and represent you during the appeal process.
At Stone Rose Law, we are VA disability advocates for veterans’ disability claims. We have board-certified VA claims lawyers who serve on behalf of veterans nationwide. Our VA-accredited attorneys give you affordable, high-quality veterans appeals legal assistance.
Our veterans lawyers provide highly professional legal representation to military veterans, helping them through the VA process to receive all the veterans’ disability benefits their disability ratings entitle them to.
If you know your VA ratings, then to get an estimate of what your disability compensation could be for an existing claim, try our VA Disability Calculator.
A Stone Rose Law disability lawyer can help you prepare your radiculopathy disability claim, monitor your claim status, and consult with you before disability examinations — all at no cost to you.
If the VA denies your original claim, our VA benefits law firm will assign a VA disability appeals lawyer to help you pursue a VA appeal with the Board of Veterans Appeals while providing free representation on a contingency fee basis.
This means you won’t pay your VA disability lawyer any fees unless we win your appeal.
For more information about how one of our VA disability lawyers can help you with your VA disability compensation claim or appeal, request a free assistance consultation at (480) 498-8998.
Or, if you prefer, you can reach us online to ask a question about veterans law, veterans disability benefits, or to set an appointment with one of our veterans lawyers for a free case evaluation.