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The VA orders this exam to verify your diagnosis and measure how severe it is right now. It can shape your rating and your monthly compensation — but it does not decide your claim. A rating specialist weighs it against your full record, and if the exam does not reflect your condition, you can say so and ask the VA to correct it.
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A blood disorder where your bone marrow makes too many platelets, increasing the risk of blood clots and sometimes bleeding. Essential thrombocythemia is named in the title of DC 7718 — "Essential thrombocythemia and primary myelofibrosis" — and that code rates on the TREATMENT you require and the blood counts that treatment maintains, not on how high your platelet count runs untreated.
The percentages this diagnostic code can be rated at. Which one applies depends on the findings — no tool here can tell you in advance.
Rated under 38 CFR 4.117, DC 7718. The examiner records findings on the DBQ; a rating specialist makes the decision.
| Rating | Rating criteria | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| 0% | Asymptomatic | You have a confirmed essential thrombocythemia diagnosis but it is producing nothing right now — no clotting or bleeding events, no constitutional symptoms, and no myelosuppressive medication for it. DC 7718 prints this 0 percent level itself, as "Asymptomatic," so it is a rung of the code rather than one § 4.31 has to supply. A 0 percent means no monthly payment, but the condition is service connected and on record, and a later increase runs from that date. Compensable levels begin once the condition requires myelosuppressive therapy, chemotherapy, or interferon. |
What supports this level
| ||
| 30% | Requiring continuous or intermittent myelosuppressive therapy, or chemotherapy, or interferon treatment to maintain platelet count of 200,000-400,000, or white blood cell (WBC) count of 4,000-10,000 | Your essential thrombocythemia requires myelosuppressive therapy, chemotherapy, or interferon — continuously or on and off — and on that treatment your counts are held inside the normal range: platelets between 200,000 and 400,000, or a white blood cell count between 4,000 and 10,000. The medication record and the serial CBCs drawn while you were on it are what carry this level. |
What supports this level
| ||
| 70% | Requiring continuous or intermittent myelosuppressive therapy, or chemotherapy, or interferon treatment to maintain platelet count <500 × 10⁹/L | You are on the same kinds of treatment — myelosuppressive therapy, chemotherapy, or interferon, continuous or intermittent — but what it holds is a platelet count under 500 × 10⁹/L (500,000) rather than the normal range. The looser target is the point: the treatment is doing less, so the code pays more. |
What supports this level
| ||
| 100% | Requiring either continuous myelosuppressive therapy, or, for six months following hospital admission for any of the following treatments: peripheral blood or bone marrow stem cell transplant, or chemotherapy, or interferon treatment | You require continuous myelosuppressive therapy; or you are inside the six months following hospital admission for a peripheral blood or bone marrow stem cell transplant, chemotherapy, or interferon treatment. Note (2) to DC 7718 provides that a mandatory VA examination is done six months after discharge — or six months after chemotherapy ends — and any reduction that follows is subject to 38 CFR 3.105(e). |
What supports this level
| ||
The middle column is our transcription of the criteria at 38 CFR 4.117, DC 7718, condensed for reading. Read the section itself on eCFR before relying on the exact wording. The items under each level are the kinds of evidence that document it — not a VA checklist, and not a prediction of which level applies to you.
Being rated under DC 7704. That code is polycythemia vera — too many red cells — and its criteria are written around phlebotomy counts, which have nothing to do with essential thrombocythemia. DC 7718 names essential thrombocythemia in its own title, so that is the code this condition belongs on.
Building the claim around your untreated platelet number. DC 7718 does not rate the raw count; every compensable rung is written around the treatment you require and the count that treatment maintains. A high platelet count with no myelosuppressive therapy, chemotherapy, or interferon does not reach the 30 percent criteria.
Assuming low-dose aspirin gets you a compensable rating. Aspirin is antiplatelet, not myelosuppressive, and DC 7718 names myelosuppressive therapy, chemotherapy, and interferon. Hydroxyurea, anagrelide, and interferon are what the criteria describe.
Letting a leukemic transformation stay rated here. Note (1) to DC 7718 directs that if the condition undergoes leukemic transformation it be evaluated as leukemia under DC 7703.
Not filing separately for stroke, pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis, or other thrombotic complications — those are rated under their own diagnostic codes and combined under 38 CFR 4.25, not folded into this rating.
Not connecting essential thrombocythemia to benzene or other chemical exposures during military service.
These apply to every C&P exam, whatever the condition.