VA Disability Rating for Incontinence
Video Transcription
Alyse Phillips: Welcome to CCK Live Under 5. I’m Alyse Phillips, an attorney at Chisholm Chisholm and Kilpatrick. And today, we will be reviewing VA ratings for incontinence.
A little bit about incontinence. Urinary incontinence refers to loss of bladder control and it’s a common condition from which many people suffer. There are several types of urinary incontinence including stress incontinence, urge incontinence, overflow incontinence, functional incontinence, and mixed incontinence.
It’s important to note that urinary incontinence in self is not a disease. Instead, it’s a symptom of the disease. So, as such, it typically requires a thorough evaluation by a medical professional to determine the cause of your incontinence.
Let’s talk a little bit about ratings. VA uses three different rating systems when evaluating the conditions in the urinary system. It will be urinary frequency, obstructive voiding, and then voiding dysfunction.
So urinary frequency refers to a condition in which the body urinates more often than usual. Ratings for the urinary frequency range from 0 percent to 40 percent based on the severity.
Obstructive voiding is a condition that makes it hard for an individual to urinate. Ratings for obstructive voiding will be from 0 percent to 30 percent, depending on severity.
And finally, voiding dysfunction is used to rate urinary incontinence. This condition is rated at 20, 40, or 60 percent, again, depending on severity.
As far as service connection is concerned, it actually might be more relevant to pursue urinary incontinence on a secondary basis. The reason for that is because it is not a disease in itself. But for example, if you are service-connected for prostate cancer and then you later develop urinary incontinence, your urinary incontinence may warrant secondary service connection based on symptoms that are secondary to your service-connected prostate cancer.
So, for more information on urinary incontinence, please check out our blog. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel and thank you for tuning in.
