Guide
The Most-Claimed VA Disability Conditions, Ranked
One condition, tinnitus, accounts for more service-connected ratings than any other by a wide margin: 3,583,295 veterans carry it. The ten conditions below make up nearly 40 percent of every disability VA compensates. Here is the full ranking, straight from VA's own numbers.
By Mario Bailey, U.S. Air Force veteran · current Air National Guard member. Data updated 2026-07-09.
VA publishes exactly how many veterans hold each service-connected disability once a year, in the compensation section of its Annual Benefits Report. The report is rarely read outside VA, but it settles a question veterans ask constantly: which conditions actually get rated, and how often. This page ranks them from the current report and links each one to the diagnostic code that governs it.
Source: VBA Annual Benefits Report, FY2025 Compensation section (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Benefits Administration), “Most prevalent SC disabilities of all compensation recipients” (p. 73) and “of new compensation recipients” (p. 72). Fiscal year 2025 covers October 1, 2024 through September 30, 2025. Retrieved July 9, 2026.
The scale first
At the close of FY2025, 6,338,253 veterans received VA disability compensation, and they held 46,496,235 service-connected disabilities between them. That is an average of 7.34 rated disabilities per veteran. A single veteran’s file routinely stacks a dozen conditions, so these counts measure ratings on the books, not headcount, and one veteran appears on many rows below.
The ten most-claimed conditions among all veterans receiving compensation
These are the conditions carried by the largest number of veterans on the rolls at the end of FY2025. The share column is that condition’s portion of all 46,496,235 service-connected disabilities.
| Rank | Condition | Body system | Veterans rated | Share of all SC disabilities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tinnitus | Auditory | 3,583,295 | 7.7% |
| 2 | Limitation of flexion, knee | Musculoskeletal | 2,312,985 | 5.0% |
| 3 | Paralysis of the sciatic nerve | Neurological | 2,026,583 | 4.4% |
| 4 | Lumbosacral or cervical strain | Musculoskeletal | 1,791,869 | 3.9% |
| 5 | Post-traumatic stress disorder | Mental | 1,760,497 | 3.8% |
| 6 | Hearing loss | Auditory | 1,690,837 | 3.6% |
| 7 | Limitation of motion of the arm | Musculoskeletal | 1,385,549 | 3.0% |
| 8 | Scars, burns (2nd degree) | Skin | 1,323,340 | 2.8% |
| 9 | Migraine | Neurological | 1,300,172 | 2.8% |
| 10 | Limitation of motion of the ankle | Musculoskeletal | 1,273,110 | 2.7% |
Together these ten conditions account for 18,448,237 ratings, or 39.7 percent of every service-connected disability VA compensates. The remaining 60 percent is spread across roughly 900 other diagnostic categories.
What the ranking shows
Tinnitus is in a class of its own. At 3,583,295 veterans, it is rated more than 1.5 times as often as the second-place condition and appears on nearly one in every thirteen service-connected disabilities in the entire system. It is also the cheapest condition for VA to grant a low rating on and among the hardest to disprove, because it is a subjective symptom rated at a flat 10 percent under Diagnostic Code 6260 in 38 CFR 4.87. Our tinnitus rating page explains why the fight in these claims is never the percentage, only service connection.
The musculoskeletal cluster is the real story. Four of the ten (knee flexion, spine strain, arm motion, ankle motion) are joint and spine limitations rated under 38 CFR 4.71a. Add them up and they total 6,763,513 ratings, more than tinnitus and hearing loss combined. This is the wear-and-tear signature of military service, and it is why the knee and back and spine diagnostic pages are among the most-used on this site.
Number three is not what its label suggests. “Paralysis of the sciatic nerve” (Diagnostic Code 8520, 38 CFR 4.124a) is the code VA uses to rate lower-extremity radiculopathy, the nerve pain that radiates from a service-connected back condition down the leg. Its high rank is a direct consequence of the spine cluster above it: radiculopathy is the classic secondary service connection, granted on top of a back disability rather than on its own.
The two auditory conditions bookend the mental-health line. Tinnitus (#1) and hearing loss (#6, Diagnostic Code 6100 under 38 CFR 4.85) together account for 5,274,132 ratings. PTSD sits at #5 with 1,760,497 veterans, rated under 38 CFR 4.130, and it is the only mental-health condition in the top ten.
The leading edge: what new claims look like
The list above is a snapshot of the whole population, weighted by decades of past decisions. To see where the system is heading, look at the conditions granted to the 476,802 veterans who came onto the compensation rolls during FY2025. VA rated 2,933,013 new service-connected disabilities for that cohort; the share column below is out of that total.
| Rank | Condition | Body system | New ratings (FY2025) | Share of new SC disabilities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tinnitus | Auditory | 287,138 | 9.8% |
| 2 | Limitation of flexion, knee | Musculoskeletal | 162,407 | 5.5% |
| 3 | Lumbosacral or cervical strain | Musculoskeletal | 141,191 | 4.8% |
| 4 | Limitation of motion of the arm | Musculoskeletal | 123,895 | 4.2% |
| 5 | Hearing loss | Auditory | 104,664 | 3.6% |
| 6 | Scars, burns (2nd degree) | Skin | 96,273 | 3.3% |
| 7 | Migraine | Neurological | 93,922 | 3.2% |
| 8 | Paralysis of the sciatic nerve | Neurological | 92,947 | 3.2% |
| 9 | Post-traumatic stress disorder | Mental | 92,917 | 3.2% |
| 10 | Limitation of motion of the ankle | Musculoskeletal | 92,184 | 3.1% |
The same ten conditions dominate, but they concentrate harder among new veterans: these ten make up 43.9 percent of all new ratings, versus 39.7 percent across the whole population. Tinnitus is even more dominant on entry, at 9.8 percent of every new disability. The one notable reshuffle is migraine, which ranks a step higher for new recipients (#7) than across the whole population (#9), consistent with a condition that has been granted more readily in recent years.
How to read these numbers
- They count disabilities, not veterans. A veteran with tinnitus, a knee, and PTSD appears on three rows. VA’s own average of 7.34 disabilities per veteran means the rows overlap heavily.
- These are VA’s legacy reporting categories, not exact diagnostic codes. “Scars, burns (2nd degree)” and “Limitation of motion of the arm” are aggregate labels VA uses in the report; the actual rating is assigned under a specific diagnostic code in 38 CFR Part 4. Where a code is settled, we name it above.
- A high rank is not a high payout. Tinnitus tops the list at a flat 10 percent. Ranking measures how common a condition is, not what it pays. What a condition is worth depends on your combined rating, which is why two 20 percent conditions do not equal 40 percent. See how VA combined ratings work or run your own numbers on the combined-rating calculator.
- The list is stable at the top and churns at the bottom. The first six positions have held for years. Ranks seven through ten trade places between reports as presumptive expansions and rating-schedule changes move categories up or down.
Sources and method
Every figure on this page is taken directly from the VBA Annual Benefits Report, FY2025 Compensation section, a public U.S. government document. The all-recipients ranking is the report’s “Most prevalent SC disabilities of all compensation recipients” table (p. 73); the new-recipients ranking is “Most prevalent SC disabilities of new compensation recipients” (p. 72), with the detailed by-sex breakdowns on pp. 98 to 99. Counts, totals, and the 7.34 average are VA’s own. We added the diagnostic-code and condition-page cross-references and computed no new figures beyond the sums VA already reports. Retrieved from benefits.va.gov/REPORTS/abr on July 9, 2026.
For the other half of the picture, how long these claims take and how many are stuck, see our VA claims backlog tracker, updated weekly from VA’s Monday Morning Workload Report.