Conditions Claimed as Secondary to a Lower Back Condition

Step 3 of the method is secondary conditions. A secondary condition is one that grew out of a condition the VA already rates.

A lower back condition carries more secondary claims than anything else on this site. Fourteen conditions have been claimed with it often enough to read, more than diabetes, more than PTSD.

Already rated for your back? Add it to the free Claim Map to see the conditions the Board has seen claimed with it.

What a secondary claim needs

Here's the rule on secondary conditions, starting in the middle of its first sentence.

… disability which is proximately due to or the result of a service-connected disease or injury shall be service connected.

Proximately due to means the first condition led to the second. Three things have to be in your file. A diagnosis of the second condition. A back that is already service connected. And a medical opinion tying the one to the other that says why.

A claim here needs a doctor to find that the back changed how you move, which led to or worsened the second condition. It isn't a finding of ours. Whether it's true for you is a question for your doctor.

Nerve pain is not a second claim, it is part of this one

The spine formula carries a note that changes what a back rating is worth.

Evaluate any associated objective neurologic abnormalities, including, but not limited to, bowel or bladder impairment, separately, under an appropriate diagnostic code.

Separately means its own rating, on top of the back rating. Sciatica or numbness running down a leg from a back condition isn't folded into the back percentage. It is the single biggest pairing here, and the one the Board grants most often.

What the Board has seen claimed with a back condition

Each links to its own page of counts.

• Nerve pain, sciatica and neuropathy: 5,097 issues, 51 percent granted of the ones decided.
• A knee condition: 2,994 issues, 25 percent.
• A hip condition: 2,967 issues, 23 percent.
• A neck condition: 2,316 issues, 22 percent.
• Depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions: 2,056 issues, 51 percent.
• A foot condition: 1,120 issues, 27 percent.
• Arthritis: 1,100 issues, 26 percent.
• A shoulder condition: 1,028 issues, 15 percent.
• Erectile dysfunction: 521 issues, 40 percent.
• Sleep apnea: 430 issues, 48 percent.

granted more oftengranted less often thicker means claimed more oftenpairing not involving tinnitus

Tap a line to read what that pairing has to show.

Two things those counts are not. Every decision counted here is an appeal, so the regional office decided the claim first and the veteran disagreed. These are not the odds on a first claim. And past decisions don't predict yours. A Board decision binds only the case it decided.

The spread is worth reading. Nerve pain and mental health sit at 51 percent granted of the ones decided. The joints sit in the twenties, and the shoulder at 15. A joint claim argues that your back changed how you move, and that the change reached another joint. That is a longer chain for a doctor to walk than a nerve running out of the spine itself.

How the back is rated

One formula covers nearly every back diagnosis, and the name of the diagnosis doesn't change the math. It measures forward flexion, which is how far you can bend forward at the waist. If you can bend forward more than 60 degrees but not past 85, that is 10. More than 30 but not past 60 is 20. Thirty degrees or less is 40. Those are percentages.

A lower back condition claimed as secondary to your knee walks through that ladder in full. That includes the step you can reach through muscle spasm and a changed walk, rather than a tape measure. It runs the other direction from this page, a back claimed because of a knee.

The Claim Map shows each of these conditions with its diagnostic code and rating steps.

The written playbook gives up to eight of your main conditions a chapter each. A chapter has the rating ladder and what the Board granted and denied in cases like yours. See what the playbook covers.

What our counts show

The back has its own page of Board counts, lower back. Since 2019 veterans raised 105,835 issues about lower back conditions, and the Board granted 38 percent of the ones it decided.

On that page, 70 percent of granted issues and 68 percent of denied ones sit in decisions that mention a medical opinion. A mention is not a reason for the outcome. It shows how often this turns on what a doctor wrote.

What to do

1. Send VA an intent to file first. If your complete claim reaches VA within a year of it, VA counts the claim as filed on the day the intent to file arrived. It doesn't have to name a condition, so you don't need the diagnosis or the opinion to send it. It doesn't work for a supplemental claim, where you add evidence and ask VA to decide again.
2. Get the second condition diagnosed in writing, by name. If nerve pain is part of it, ask whether a nerve study is in your record.
3. Name the back in the claim as the condition the second one is secondary to.
4. Ask for the range of motion numbers from your exam, and for what the examiner wrote about how you walk and stand.
5. Ask your doctor for the reasoning, not only the conclusion. The phrase to ask for is at least as likely as not. Step 1 covers that letter.
6. File the claim with all of it attached, within a year of your intent to file.

The nine steps lays out the rest. I'm not your representative.