How Is Glaucoma Diagnosed? What to Know About Glaucoma VA Benefits

One of the most common diseases that affect American military veterans is glaucoma.

Unfortunately, many veterans don’t know they can receive benefits for glaucoma. This stems from poor communication from Veteran Affairs (the VA). Some veterans don’t even know the answer to the question, “How is glaucoma diagnosed?”

Figuring out how to file a claim for benefits is the least of their worries.

If you are a veteran who suffers from glaucoma, here is everything you need to know about filing a claim to get VA disability benefits.

What Is Glaucoma?

Glaucoma is a category of diseases that affect the optic nerves. The types of glaucoma vary from one to another. To determine the specific types, doctors analyze the extent of the condition, the way it inhibits sight, and the age of the person who contracts it. Most of the people who contract glaucoma are 80 years old or older, but it isn’t uncommon for people as young as 50.

When untreated, glaucoma can cause extreme headaches, blurry vision, and blindness.

How Is Glaucoma Diagnosed?

People with glaucoma don’t typically exhibit any symptoms until years into the disease. When symptoms finally do appear, it is usually too late to treat them. These symptoms are often mistaken for migraine headaches, dry eye syndrome, and conjunctivitis. As such, people suffering from glaucoma are often misdiagnosed. The only way to ensure an accurate diagnosis is to attend regular eye exams with an optometrist.

How Do You Treat Glaucoma?

At present, there is no cure for glaucoma. Instead, treatment options focus on slowing the rate of the disease and managing its more severe symptoms.

Early treatment plans include supplements that increase eye health. These include:

• Matcha and ginseng teas.
• Vitamins A, C, and E.
• Zinc tablets.

Other recommendations include:

• Sleeping with your head elevated to reduce eye strain while unconscious.
• Increasing your water intake.
• Reducing or removing caffeine from your diet.

Alternative Measures

Medical marijuana has also proven to be an effective cure. It may even be cheaper or more accessible for veterans who live in states where marijuana use is legal.

Doctors may also prescribe medical eye drops. Unlike over-the-counter brands like Visine, prescription eye drops slow the progress of glaucoma and improve overall vision.

Surgery

If your glaucoma is serious enough, you may require surgery. The most common technique is laser surgery (which is like LASIK).

The next most common suggestion is trabeculectomy (surgical removal of the inflamed and damaged nerves in the whites of the eyes). Doctors may also suggest minimally invasive glaucoma surgery (MIGS), which consists of inserting a drainage tube behind the optical nerves to relieve pressure and eye strain.

These are drastic measures, though. Patients with early-onset and milder cases of glaucoma should probably not consider them.

How to Handle Your Veteran’s C & P Exam

Do You Qualify for Glaucoma Disability?

Before filing a claim to receive disability benefits from the VA, you’ll need to see a doctor. The best option is an optometrist because they are specifically certified to diagnose glaucoma. After that, you should do a little bit of research into VA disability. 

Research With Us to See Your Possible Rating

The first research step is to determine whether you qualify for disability benefits. To qualify, you must meet specific criteria. These include:

• A significant degree of vision loss (20/200 vision or less for most claimants).
• Notable damage to central sight (your ability to see things directly in front of you, nearby, and at a distance).
• Notable damage to peripheral sight (your ability to see things around you).

How Do You Figure Out Your VA Benefits?

After you’ve determined that you qualify for disability benefits, you’ll need to determine the amount of money you should receive. There are a few different ways to calculate the amount of your benefits based on your stage in the filing process and your specific needs.

Research Compensation Rates

If you’ve just begun to file your claim or you haven’t yet received confirmation that you qualify, your first step should be to review the official VA website. Because you’ll be filing your claim through the VA, this is the best place to get an estimate of how much you should be getting. We will interview you to review any other possible disabilities that might be secondary-connections or presumptive based on when you served.

You can also get more disability depending on your spouse or other dependents. By using our VA Disability Calulator, you can factor in all of those additional variables as well as the bilateral factor and general ratings.

One of our VA disability lawyers shows you how to use our VA Disability Calculator in this video:

Disability Ratings Are Based on your Glaucoma Diagnosis

If you’ve already seen your doctor about glaucoma, they should have given you an estimate of your disability rating. This rating is given as a percentage (0% to 100%) based on your level of impairment. This level is primarily dependent upon the edition of the American Medical Association (AMA) guidebook that your doctor uses.

There are three versions of the AMA guidebook currently in use: the 3rd, 4th, and 5th. Each state has a different legal requirement for which of these versions to consult, and disability ratings may differ greatly between versions. For example, someone in Virginia who can only read the first three lines of a vision chart may qualify for a greater disability amount than someone with the same level of vision loss in Florida.

If you’re confused or concerned about how your disability rating is calculated, ask your doctor which version of the AMA guidebook he or she used and what it says about glaucoma and other optical conditions.

VA doctors will know to give you your disability rating immediately, but other doctors may need to be told. Either way, always make sure that you are provided your official disability rating in writing.

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Dependency Situation

Dependency in terms of VA benefits means the same thing as dependency for filing taxes. In other words, do you have children, a spouse, or aging/disabled parents that rely on you as the main source of income? If you are responsible for any of these people, you will qualify for a greater benefits payout than you would if you filed a claim as an individual.  

Use the Veterans Disability Calculator

An even easier method for estimating your benefits amount is to use the Veterans Disability Calculator. This calculator focuses on disability rates for damage to the limbs. However, the Additional Disability section enables you to calculate rates for other issues, including PTSD and vision impairment. Again, all you need to know when using this tool is your disability rating and dependency information. Unlike the VA compensation rates page, though, the calculator gives you an exact amount instead of a potential range.

Hire a Veterans Disability Compensation Benefits Lawyer

If you are wary of conducting your own research or have already determined that you need assistance, the best option is to hire a veterans disability compensation benefits lawyer. These lawyers are specially trained to do the heavy lifting for determining your benefits amount, coordinating with the VA, and filing your claim. Veterans disability compensation benefits lawyers are held to a high ethical standard, so you usually won’t have to pay them unless they win the full amount of your appeal.

As with the other two methods, these lawyers will first ask you for your disability rating and dependency status. They will also ask questions related to your military service and the circumstances surrounding your glaucoma. For example, were you a sniper? Did you suffer eye damage, either minimal or extreme, while on-duty? Is your glaucoma related to another condition or disease you contracted while in the military? If any of these is true, then you may qualify for greater benefits.

This video provides a short overview of how to contact and hire a veterans disability compensation benefits lawyer.

Other Vision Disorders and VA Disability

VA disability for vision disorders isn’t specific to glaucoma. If you suffer from dry eye syndrome or vitreous detachment (i.e. “eye floaters”, or spotty vision), you may also be able to receive benefits from the VA.

Visual Impairment VA Ratings

For all vision disorders, including glaucoma, the VA takes the following into consideration to determine an appropriate disability rating:

• Visual acuity
• Field of vision
• Eye movement and muscle function.

Visual acuity refers to how blurry or spotty your vision is depending on the placement of the thing you’re looking at. For example, if you can only distinguish the letters on an eye chart if it is right in front of you, you are probably nearsighted, and if you can distinguish the letters if it is a few feet away, you are probably farsighted. 

Field of vision also depends on rating how blurry your vision is, but it focuses on peripheral vision rather than direct sight.

Finally, the VA will take into account your eye movement and muscle function (i.e. how easily you can move your eyes to look in other directions). If your eyes are fairly static, odds are that you suffer from diplopia, more commonly known as double vision.

Severe issues in all three of these areas may be indicative of dry eye syndrome, vitreous detachment, and other serious vision disorders.

VA Disability Ratings for Vision Disorders

Most vision disorders receive a VA disability rating of 10% or 20% depending on whether the disorder affects just one eye or both eyes. For example, dry eye syndrome might be caused by either lagophthalmos (an inability to fully close the eyelids) or retinal dystrophy (degradation of the retina). Although the latter is generally a much more dangerous condition, you will still receive only a 20% rating even if both of your eyes are affected.

There are a few exceptions to this rule, however. Retinoid detachment, which can be caused by severe dry eye syndrome and often presents as floaters, can easily receive a disability rating of 60% or more. This is because detachment of the retina can result in total blindness if it isn’t immediately corrected.

Diseases that aren’t specific to the eyes but still affect vision are also more likely to get a higher VA disability rating. Diabetes is the most common of these conditions. Severe and unmanaged diabetes can easily result in blindness (among other tragedies, like loss of limb or even loss of life), so the VA will be more inclined to give you a high disability rating if that’s the cause of your vision problems.

Also, as we already mentioned, glaucoma ratings are highly variable and not constrained to 10% or 20% ratings.

Here are some tips from one of our VA disability lawyers about how to handle your C&P Exam.

How Do You File a Claim?

You can start filing your claim today by calling us at  (866)232-5777. We’ll interview you and send you the necessary paperwork to file with the VA. This process may last as few as 8 weeks or as many as 10 months. The average claim as of March 2020 takes approximately 6 months to be received, analyzed, and dispatched by the VA. We keep in touch and follow up as often as we can to make sure you know your application is on track. 

If you want to DIY your VA disability claim, you’ll need to go through the VA’s eBenefits website to register for an account. Otherwise, you can complete VA Form 21-526EZ and mail it to the Department of Veterans Affairs. If you work with us, all of the phone calls and services are not charged until the very end if we win your case. If we don’t win and we can’t appeal, you won’t pay a thing. We don’t like that to happen, of course, so we fight to win your case. We split your backpay 80/20 (you get the 80%) and we don’t take anything out of your future monthly compensation.

Can I Appeal the VA’s Decision?

If you feel that you haven’t been awarded appropriate compensation for your glaucoma, you can refile your claim or otherwise submit an appeal to the VA. The specific steps for this process vary from case to case, so, if you haven’t already contacted a veterans disability compensation benefits lawyer, now is the time to do so.

Filing an appeal is often more difficult than filing an initial claim, so hiring a professional to advocate for you will only increase your odds of receiving the payment you need.

To get an idea of the steps that a veterans disability compensation benefits lawyer may take to help you file an appeal, review this video from Woods Lawyers.

Veteran Rights

Like any other disease, condition, or disability contracted in the line of duty, glaucoma is no laughing matter. Every veteran deserves compensation for their sacrifices. It isn’t only our casualties who deserve respect.

How is glaucoma diagnosed? What other conditions do I have that could qualify me for VA benefits? If you have more questions or need details about calculating disability ratings, applying for VA benefits, and your legal rights as a veteran and an American citizen, contact Woods Lawyers.