Hypertension: From Board Denial to Court Reversal

The two-step reality of a hypertension appeal: what the Board does with these issues, and — when veterans appeal a denial to the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims — the arguments that get Board denials set aside.

What this is computed from: the 843 opinions and orders the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims chose to publish (1996–2026), taken from the Court's own site and read by rule — the disposition from each decision's holding sentence, the reasoning type and conditions from the decision text, and every quoted passage verbatim from the cited decision with the veteran's name removed. No model summaries. Of 1,201 published documents, 83 petitions, 144 attorney-fee (EAJA) decisions, 48 procedural orders, 2 unreadable files, 8 documents without a docket number are excluded and 73 could not be classified, leaving 843. Published decisions are not all decisions: the Court decides roughly 8–9,000 appeals a year, most by unpublished single-judge decision or on the parties' joint motion; the official disposition counts below come from the Court's annual report, never from this sample. Selection effect: only Board decisions a veteran chose to appeal reach the Court, so no figure here describes all Board denials. Data build: 2026-10-07 (method v2, September 2026 — replaces an earlier build that used machine summaries of a mixed-court search corpus).

Step 1 — Hypertension at the Board

From our issue-level parse of 1,929,585 public Board decisions (dated 1992-03-30 to 2026-07-31; archive years 1992–2025 complete; 2026 partial, added as the Board publishes; Board data build 2026-10-07):

Issues decided

92,775

Granted

16.9% (15,637)

Denied

34.7% (32,169)

Remanded

42.8% (39,720)

Open these issues in the Board decision finder (filter by judge, years, outcome or evidence; links to each decision on va.gov). Full Board-level tables: outcome rates by condition · judge statistics.

Step 2 — published Court decisions that mention hypertension

Published CAVC decisions mentioning hypertension

Board decision disturbed

55.2% (16)

What the Court said the Board got wrong — verbatim

CAVC No. 13-3048 · 2015 · published opinion · reasoning: unclassified

“Thus, the Court holds that the Board erred by failing to follow the Secretary's own established procedures.”

CAVC No. 13-0540 · 2015 · published opinion · reasoning: credibility

“Additionally, the Board did not consider the extent of the appellant's tinnitus symptoms when it made an adverse credibility determination based on the appellant's "lack of complaints or treatment for tinnitus to medical professionals for 29 years after discharge from service.”

CAVC No. 12-2764 · 2014 · published other · reasoning: duty to assist

“Accordingly, the Court concludes that the Board provided an inadequate statement of reasons or bases for concluding that VA had satisfied its duty to assist.”

CAVC No. 05-0189 · 2007 · published opinion · reasoning: reasons or bases

“Here, the Board failed to address whether an autopsy to determine the cause of death could be reasonably obtained or whether an autopsy would even be helpful in this case.”

Each passage is the Court's own sentence from the cited published decision, with the veteran's name removed; the reasoning label is a keyword tag for the decision as a whole. Read the full decision at the Court's opinions page or by docket number at CourtListener. A holding that fit one record does not guarantee it fits another.

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