Question:

i have ischemic heart disease. i had two stents put in my widowmaker artery 6 years ago and, in july,  I had heart attach and they found 80 percent blockage in front of the stents and 90 percent behind the stents or the opposite before and after and they also found 70 percent blockage in the circumflex artery.  So now I have 5 stents in my heart. and I also have an aneurysm in my ascending aorta that has grown from 4.1 to 4.4 in 6 months along with mild dilation in the descending aorta.

I have 30 percent disability from VA from 6 years ago due to agent orange exposure. Would the combination of the heart attack, new stents and the aneurysm possibly rate an increase in disability rating?  Is the prior blockage and the aneurysm associated?  I am a time bomb ticking,  in my opinion

Jim's Reply:

VA has a unique way of rating our heart disease if we are eligible for service connected ischemic heart disease or IHD. The degree of damage to the heart from IHD is a measurement of how efficiently the heart works. Even if you've had a dozen stents and a number of surgical bypasses, if your heart still works efficiently, the final rating will be lower than most would think appropriate. The measurements used are the 'ejection fraction', a measurement of how efficiently the heart pump works and a measurement called cardiac METS, another way to measure the pump of the heart. An aortic aneurysm isn't generally rated service connected as is IHD,  since the aneurysm is presumptive to agent orange. If the efficiency of your heart has deteriorated, you may deserve a higher rating...otherwise, probably not.