Orthopedic Cases
VA Benefits for Muscle, Bone or Joint Pain?
Seeking VA service connection for back pain, arthritis, or bone fractures?
Repetitive physical activity, military vehicle accidents, bone injuries, exposure to toxins, and other in-service events can lead to chronic back pain, neck pain, joint pain, or muscle pain – sometimes appearing long after service.
Our medical experts provide VA nexus letters to service connect various chronic pain disabilities and other orthopedic problems. Most commonly, veterans use our services to establish service connection for lower back, knee or ankle conditions – lower back pain being the most common. Of course, in-service events can cause later issues with any bone, joint, muscle, or tendon system in the body, including the back, neck, knee, ankle, foot, wrist, and elbow.
Types of orthopedic problems commonly
associated with military service include:
- Arthritis
- Bone fragments / fractures
- Bursitis
- Carpal tunnel syndrome
- Cubital tunnel syndrome
- Elbow pain / range of motion problems
- Fibromyalgia
- Foot pain / range of motion problems
- Hand pain / range of motion problems
- Hip fractures
- Joint pain
- Knee ligament injuries
- Knee pain
- Kyphosis
- Lateral epicondylitis (tennis elbow)
- Low back pain
- Medial epicondylitis (baseball elbow / golfer’s elbow)
- Neck pain
- Osteoarthritis
- Osteoporosis
- Paget’s disease
- Rheumatoid arthritis
- Scoliosis
- Shoulder pain / range of motion problems
- Soft-tissue injuries
- Torn meniscus
- Wrist pain / range of motion problems
Veterans face multiple challenges in obtaining a VA nexus letter to service connect lower back pain, or other knee, ankle or orthopedic problems. For one, many veterans receive a normal discharge physical exam, even though an injury or repetitive stress event occurred during service.
Many years may elapse before a veteran is finally diagnosed with an orthopedic problem. Usually, the medical condition is a degenerative disc or degenerative joint problem, such as arthritis or other joint pain.
The VA denies service connection for many orthopedic problems on the grounds that a veteran received a healthy discharge exam and a long period of time elapsed between discharge and diagnosis.
However, the VA and VA doctors typically overlook the reality that repetitive stress events or injuries may heal in service and typically don’t cause degenerative problems immediately. Rather, the in-service event increases the risk that the veteran will develop a chronic degenerative joint problem down the road.
It would be unlikely that a veteran could fall and injure their back during service and then immediately exhibit degenerative joint problems on X-ray or MRI. This is just not how these conditions play out. In reality, those injuries merely set in motion a very slow degenerate process that takes many years to develop.
The reason there is usually a lengthy period between discharge from service and the onset of an official orthopedic diagnosis is that veterans don’t seek treatment until the condition degenerates to the point that symptoms become evident.
Decades of experience with veterans’ disability claims, our doctors are renowned for their meticulous research, recognition of all relevant scientific links between service events and cancers, and diligent nexus letter preparation.