so
welcome to cck live my name is kayla dinafrio i'm joined today by my colleagues matthew fusco
and alex sacks and today we're going to be talking about how va rates conditions that affect the
genital urinary system so first very generally talking about what the genital urinary system is
this system consists of organs of the reproductive system and the urinary system so the reproductive
system would include the vagina ovaries uterus fallopian tubes external genitalia and the
perineum in women and the prostate glands testicles epididymis in the penis in men
and the urinary system would include the kidney your reader's bladder and the urethra
these two systems are grouped together in the va breeding schedule because of their proximity
to one another and their use of common pathways within the body some of the primary functions of
the genital urinary system include excretion of liquid waste products regulation of blood volume
electrolyte regulation acid-base balance regulation and arterial blood pressure regulation
we're going to talk about a number of different examples of some of these conditions today but
just to name a few of the common ones that we do see it would include things like renal failure
kidney stones and prostate cancer now if you have one of these conditions and you believe that it's
related to service the next thing that you would want to do is file a claim for service connection
alec what would a veteran need to do if they thought that their condition was
related to service and what sort of things would they need to show va to be successful
yeah so in order to establish direct service connection for these type of conditions
veterans must demonstrate that their condition is related to their time in service so you can
do that by showing the three elements of service connection and that they're satisfied so the
first element is that you have a current medical diagnosis of the general to urinary condition
the second that there must be there must have been some in-service event injury or illness and
then third a nexus element what we sometimes call there must be a medical nexus linking that current
diagnosed genital urinary condition to the in-service event or illness or
injury and then after reviewing a veteran's claims file and the evidence submitted
as well as the results from you know va treatment records or compensation and pension examinations
the va will make a decision on the service connection claim if it concedes service connection
for the condition it's then going to assign a disability rating based on its severity great
and just to note when filing service connection claims va does require specific forms for these
if it's your first time filing the claim they are going to require that you do so on a 21-526 ez
form if it's not your first time filing the claim and it's been more than one year since you were
last denied for the claim they will require you file a supplemental claim with new and relevant
evidence and that would be the 20-0-998 form that you would uh excuse me the 20-0-9-9-5 form that
you would use um so just something to keep in mind if you are interested in filing the claim
but like alex said um once va does concede that your condition is related to service the next
thing that they're going to do is decide what rating that they should be assigning it and
that'll be based on the severity so matt what does va do when they're rating disabilities
for the genital urinary system and specifically how do they rate the the conditions within the
urinary system sure so general urinary conditions are rated under 38 cfr 4.115 a which is titled
ratings of the genital urinary system dash dysfunctions conditions affecting kidney function
are referred to as renal while ureters urethra and bladder conditions are called urinary
so first we're going to talk about the urinary rating system there are three different urinary
rating systems which we will discuss the first is urinary frequency um and a condition is evaluated
under the rating for urinary frequency if the condition itself causes the body to urinate
more often than normal for this category the condition is rated at levels of 10
20 percent or 40 the next is obstructed voiding the obstructed voiding rating system is reserved
for disabilities that make it difficult to urinate obstructed voiding is rated at the level 0
10 or 30 and the last is avoiding dysfunction all urinary conditions that cannot be accounted for
under a rating for urinary frequency or obstructive voiding like we just discussed are
rated by the voiding dysfunction system and those are given ratings at 20 40 or 60 percent thank you
and then like matt said the the kidney conditions will be rated under the renal rating system
all conditions under the reading the renal system are rated under one general rating formula
and those conditions are going to be rated at 0 30 60 80 or 100 depending on the condition and
the severity of the condition some of the common examples that we see of conditions that are rated
under this general formula include nephrectomy which is the removal of one kidney this condition
is automatically going to be rated at 30 but it could be higher depending on the working condition
of the remaining kidney another common one is nephritis which is the swelling of the nephrons
within the kidney this condition can only be rated if it's directly caused by an infectious disease
and it has continued despite the appropriate treatment of that disease another one is
pyelonephritis which is a form of nephritis where a urinary tract infection has spread up to the
kidney and this can this condition can be rated either in the renal rating system or on ratings
for the urinary tract infection it's going to be whichever one's resulting in the higher rating to
the veteran that is part of ea's duty to maximize your benefits especially if there's more than one
diagnostic code that might list symptoms that kind of encapsulate the condition that you have
another very common one that we see is kidney disease and that would be for any kidney disease
that requires regular dialysis and then the last one that i'm going to talk about is the kidney
transplant kidney transplants are automatically rated at 100 for one year following the transplant
surgery after the expiration of that one year period the condition will be reevaluated
and then rated on any symptoms under the renal rating criteria the minimum rating that they'll
assign at that point is 30 but they will likely send you to a compensation and pension exam to
see if you would warrant a higher rating so if you are scheduled for one um it is important
that you attend to make sure you're maximizing the rating that you can get out of that alec how does
va rate cancers affecting the genital urinary system so typically veterans diagnosed with
service connected cancers of the genital urinary system are awarded a 100 temporary total va rating
while the veteran is still receiving treatment and then for the six months following the
completion of that treatment from then on veterans are rated on their residuals such as as we talked
about urinary frequency or that's for prostate cancer for example um and in addition to cancer
veterans with gender urinary conditions are maybe entitled to what's called tdiu or total disability
based on individual unemployability this is a va benefit that compensates veterans who are unable
to work to their service-connected conditions and in awards a total 100 rating so it's intended for
veterans who cannot maintain substantially gainful employment due to the genital urinary condition
or any other condition for that matter two things to note that there are two kinds of tdiu
scheduler and extra scheduler veterans affected by the general urinary condition may be eligible
for tdiu scheduler tdiu if they meet certain criteria that's established where the veteran
has one service connected general to urinary disability rated at at least a 60 disabled or
the veteran has more than one service disability with one condition rated at least 40 percent
and a combined rating of at least 70 percent and then beyond schedule or tdiu veterans who don't
meet these requirements may still be eligible to qualify uh under an extra scheduler basis
great thank you both i think that's a really good place for us to wrap up today's broadcast
to learn more about tdiu va ratings and the service connection process in general we do have
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