A Request for Examination may ask you to provide a medical opinion. For C&P purposes, a medical opinion is a conclusion made by an examiner based on the body of current medical knowledge and the evidence of record. Most commonly, you will be asked to provide a medical opinion to help adjudicators make determinations such as:

• a condition's relationship to an event, injury, illness, or disease during a claimant's service
• relationships between medical conditions
• a condition's etiology
• reconciling diagnoses

VA does not need an examination or a medical opinion for every service-connection claim. Either VBA requests a medical opinion, or sometimes the evidence of record or evidence gathered during the examination prompts you to provide one.

The required DMA Medical Opinions course provides in-depth information about medical opinions.