welcome to cck live under five i'm elise phillips and i'm breaking down va claims for ratings for
bilateral hearing loss bilateral hearing loss refers to loss of hearing in both ears
for va purposes veterans must undergo a hearing exam by a licensed audiologist in order to be
diagnosed with hearing loss through the va and then subsequently service connected that
audiologist is going to administer two separate tests for va and then they're going to also
accept your current diagnosis of hearing loss this is going to be the maryland cnc
test and the pure tone auto autometric test
you might have a diagnosis of hearing loss from your primary care doctor but this
does not count as evidence towards your claim so that's something that's important to keep in mind
now the ratings for bilateral hearing loss are a little bit complicated so we are going to go ahead
and show you a chart um and i am going to explain that while that's showing va uses a grid chart to
determine a roman numeral designation for hearing impairment based on combination of a percent
of speech discrimination and the pure tone threshold average veterans should first find
the roman numeral going down the left side of the ear that has the greater auditory function next
they should locate the roman numeral of the ear with the less auditory functioning which can be
found across the table finally veterans should look at where the two roman numerals intersect
and that is going to be your rating disability rings for hearing loss are assigned based on
severity of zero to a hundred most often veterans receive a ten percent rating for hearing loss
importantly ba rates both ears together so that means that veterans will only receive
one rating for hearing loss that's true even if you have bilateral hearing loss
since ratings are based on specific hearing tests that invoke a very literal application of the
rating schedule it's very difficult for veterans to receive disability rating for hearing loss
higher than the one assigned just based on those test results alone
however veterans can't submit additional evidence supporting the fact that their hearing loss
warrants a higher disability rating if you have total hearing loss in both ears you
might be entitled to compensation through smc uh beyond the standard va disability compensation
namely 38 cfr section 3.350 instructs va to assign smck and a minimum base aluminum-based loss
of use of the sense of hearing which is paid in addition to the regular va disability compensation
um on your reading we do have some more in-depth uh information on hearing loss both on our blog
and in our youtube channel so please feel free to check those out
thanks for watching for more information again check out our youtube channel or our website
you