Understanding Neuropathy Ratings: Key Insights for Veterans
Sharing two important things about military neuropathy ratings for veterans. I’m sharing the nitty gritty details about ratings, one for the upper extremities and one for the lower extremities.
🙌🏼 If you are rated for neuropathy in your hands there’s an important distinction that you need to know. They can rate neuropathy under several different rating codes.
📞Call 1 800 827 1000, and ask for your ratings code sheet, they can email that to you right away.
Look at your ratings code sheet and it will tell you a four digit code that they use to rate your neuropathy. Then you go to that code neuropathy rating and see how they distinguish between the different levels of that disability.
Neuropathy Ratings for the Upper Extremities
If you’re rated under diagnostic code 8510, then there is a separate rating if it’s your major or your minor hand. So if you have neuropathy in your hands, then your right hand is going to be rated higher than your left hand if you’re right handed. Similar if you’re left handed, your left hand would be rated higher. The reasoning is that if you have neuropathy in both of your hands, it’s going to affect your dominant side at a higher level. And so they rate that side at a higher level.
That’s what they should do. They don’t always do that.
So get your ratings code sheet, find out what your peripheral neuropathy rating number is, and then look at that number and find out if your dominant side or your major side is rated at a higher level than your non dominant side.
That’s a mistake that can cost you money because if your right side, 10 percent higher, That could change your overall rating and change your monthly payment.
Addressing Lower Extremity Neuropathy
🦶🏼If you have neuropathy in your feet, it does not matter how bad it gets, if the only change is sensory change, then your rating can only go so high. Let’s say you have zero feeling in your feet, but everything else is the same. Your strength is the same, your reflexes are the same.
You have no much muscle atrophy, nothing like that. You’re still only going to be rated at 20 percent because it’s only sensory. That’s frustrating. One thing to notice and to point out if you’re in an exam or when you’re in an exam for neuropathy is if you have something called trophic changes.
And that means if you have no hair growth on your lower legs. You might not have the muscle atrophy or the muscle weakness, but you will have this, what’s called trophic change, which is the loss of hair or different, like shiny skin on your lower extremities.
And that will get you a higher rating Because then it’s not just a sensory change, there is also a change in your skin. So that’s something to point out, and that’s something that examiners will notate, but there’s not a specific box in the DBQ. Like when they’re doing the DBQ for peripheral neuropathy, lower extremities, there’s not a box for them to check that says they have loss of hair.
So the examiner might notate that, But when your rater is looking at your exam notes, if they see, “Oh, no muscle change, no reflex change, it’s all just sensory,” then they’ll keep it at 20%. But if they notice that you have trophic changes, then that will grant you a higher rating.
If the examiner has notated in your DBQ that you have trophic changes, but your rating for neuropathy has not changed, that is something to point out in either a supplemental claim or a higher level review.
Some things to pay attention to that would get you potentially a higher rating than you already have.