hi everyone thank you so much for tuning in today i'm maura black i'm an attorney here
at chisholm chisholm and kilpatrick welcome to cck's live under five discussion for today today
we're discussing hypertension ratings and how to get benefits for hypertension through the va
hypertension means high blood pressure which many of you probably know blood pressure is
the pressure of blood that pushes against the walls of your arteries and hypertension usually
has no warning signs or symptoms so many people might be unaware that they have this condition
hypertension is usually caused by certain lifestyle choices that might not be classified
as healthy such as not getting enough regular activity and exercise or other conditions to
other uncontrollable conditions like diabetes and obesity that people might suffer from
some people are able to lower their blood pressure and reduce their risk of high blood pressure
by making certain lifestyle changes such as regular physical activity cessation of smoking
eating a healthy diet limiting sodium and alcohol intake keeping a healthy weight managing stress
etc which is a lot to do but others need to take medicine to manage their high blood pressure so
it's not always the case that lifestyle choices will be able to resolve or totally cure a high
blood pressure condition if someone has it hypotension is usually diagnosed by blood pressure
measurements there are two pertinent blood pressure measurement numbers to think about
that doctors will use to diagnose hypertension the first is systolic blood pressure which measures
the pressure in your arteries when your heart beats and the diastolic number or part of your
blood pressure reading measures the pressure in your arteries when your heart rests between
beats so it's measuring the beat uh pressure and then the kind of the relaxation rest pressure
and that of all of those numbers go into whether a person needs to be diagnosed with hypertension
and also sometimes whether they need medication to control hypertension for va purposes hypertension
as a disability is defined as 90 or higher for the diastolic number and 160 or higher for systolic so
90 over 160 that might be a term that you hear at the doctor's office or something like it based on
what your blood pressure readings are and that number is going to dictate whether va determines
or sees your blood pressure readings as a disability for compensation compensation purposes
so let's talk about ratings va rates hypertension the same whether service connection is established
for hypertension directly presumptively or secondarily as due to another condition such
as sleep apnea so no matter how you get service connected for hypertension va's rating process
is going to be roughly the same and the rating criteria that via uses is within diagnostic code
7101 which can be found at title 38 of the code of federal regulations at section 4.104 those are the
ratings where the diagnostic codes come into play for cardiovascular conditions and hypertension can
be compensated with a 10 20 40 or 60 rating all of those ratings within va's diagnostic code
are based on blood pressure measurements essentially so there's a lot of numbers
in that code based on the systolic and diastolic numbers that are relevant to whether hypertension
is a disability and how disabling it is at least as as far as va views it so if you're
seeking service connection for hypertension keep in mind that you need to have the 90
or higher diastolic number and 160 or higher systolic number for disability benefits purposes
and if you're seeking increased ratings for hypertension you'll definitely want to be looking
at diagnostic code 7101 and again that's at section 4.104 of title 38 of the code of federal
regulations that will give you some guidance as to how va rates hypertension thank you all so
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tune in again for other videos um and again thank you so much for joining us today have a great one
you