Body system: Respiratory SystemRegulation: 38 CFR § 4.97DBQ: DBQ RESP Respiratory Conditions (Other than Tuberculosis and Sleep Apnea)
Chronic bronchitis is a long-term lung condition where your airways are constantly inflamed and produce too much mucus, making it hard to breathe. The VA rates this condition from 10% to 100% based on how well your lungs function through breathing tests and other measurements. Higher ratings go to veterans whose lung function is more severely impacted - a 100% rating means your lungs work at less than 40% of what's expected, while a 10% rating means they're working at 71-80% capacity.
Rating levels
- 100% — You qualify for this rating if breathing tests show your lungs are working at less than 40% of what's expected for someone your age and size, or if you can only consume less than 15 ml/kg/min of oxygen during exercise due to heart or lung problems. You also qualify if you have serious heart complications from your lung condition like right heart failure (cor pulmonale), enlarged right heart chamber (right ventricular hypertrophy), or high blood pressure in your lungs (pulmonary hypertension), or if you've had episodes where you couldn't breathe well enough on your own (acute respiratory failure) or need to use oxygen at home.
- 60% — You qualify with any one of four test results: FEV-1 (the air you can force out in one second) of 40 to 55 percent of the predicted value; an FEV-1/FVC ratio of 40 to 55 percent (the share of your full forced breath that comes out in the first second, an actual ratio rather than a percent of predicted); DLCO (how well your lungs pass oxygen into the blood) of 40 to 55 percent predicted; or a maximum oxygen consumption on exercise testing of 15 to 20 ml/kg/min with a cardiorespiratory limitation. At this level your chronic bronchitis limits you to about half of normal lung function.
- 30% — You qualify with any one of three test results: FEV-1 (the air you can force out in one second) of 56 to 70 percent of the predicted value for someone your age, sex and size; an FEV-1/FVC ratio of 56 to 70 percent (the share of your full forced breath that comes out in the first second, an actual ratio rather than a percent of predicted); or DLCO (how well your lungs pass oxygen into the blood) of 56 to 65 percent predicted. At this level your chronic bronchitis clearly limits your breathing, but you keep more than half of normal lung function.
- 10% — To qualify for this rating level, your lung function tests must show mild impairment in one of three key measurements. Either your FEV-1 (the amount of air you can forcefully exhale in one second) is 71-80% of what's expected for someone your age and size, or your FEV-1/FVC ratio (how much air you can blow out compared to your total lung capacity) is 71-80%, or your DLCO test (which measures how well oxygen moves from your lungs into your blood) shows 66-80% of normal function.