Citation Nr: 18149974
Decision Date: 11/14/18	Archive Date: 11/14/18

DOCKET NO. 17-42 821
DATE:	November 14, 2018
REMANDED
The service connection claim for bilateral hearing loss is remanded.
REASONS FOR REMAND
The Veteran had active duty from December 1952 to December 1956.
While the Board sincerely regrets the additional delay, this claim must be remanded for further development. Specifically, the August 2015 VA examination is inadequate because the examiner concluded that the status of the Veteran’s hearing during service was unknown and that she could not provide an opinion on any hearing loss, which may be present, due to unreliability of the test results after examination of the Veteran. Basically, despite repeated attempts at reinstruction and retesting, the examiner stated that the final results were unreliable and not suitable for rating purposes because speech reception thresholds were not in agreement with pure tone averages. Similarly, she noted that puretone results were inconsistent with the Veteran’s demonstrated communication ability. At the same time, the Veteran appealed the rating decision, stating that he did not understand the examiner’s instruction to push button for response. Instead, he recalled that he used hand signals resulting in an invalid test. 
Considering the above, a new VA examination is warranted before the Veteran’s claim for bilateral hearing loss can be adjudicated. 
The matter is REMANDED for the following action:
1. Obtain the Veteran’s VA medical treatment records dated July 2017 forward.
2. After the above development has been completed, schedule the Veteran for the appropriate VA examination to determine the nature and etiology of his bilateral hearing loss. The claims folder should be made available to the examiner for review, and the examination reports should reflect that such a review was undertaken. All necessary tests should be performed. 
The examiner should provide an opinion as to whether the Veteran’s bilateral hearing loss is at least as likely as not (a 50% or higher probability) related to any incident of service, including exposure to hazardous noise from firing big guns aboard ship during “shore bombardment” in Korea.
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The examiner must include rationale for all opinions. If the opinion is to the effect that the Veteran’s hearing loss is unrelated to his service, the explanation should identify the etiology for the hearing loss considered more likely.
 
J. Rutkin
Acting Veterans Law Judge
Board of Veterans’ Appeals
ATTORNEY FOR THE BOARD	N. Sangster, Counsel