Almost everyone’s been there. You just hit your head and you can tell that something isn’t quite right. Now you need to consider whether you might have suffered a traumatic brain injury.
Read on to learn more about TBI and what to do if you’ve just suffered from a head injury.
What is a Traumatic Brain Injury?
The words “traumatic brain injury” feel pretty big and scary, don’t they? Your mind probably goes to sports injuries, car crashes, and other extreme examples involving a direct blow to the head.
But TBIs are far more common than you might think, and they come with a wide variety of symptoms—and you don’t necessarily have to hit your head to experience one.
A traumatic brain injury can be caused by a forceful bump, blow, or jolt to the head or body or from an object that pierces the skull and enters the brain (like a bullet). But other common ways to experience one is during a fall or car accident, with the TBI occurring because of the whip of the head.
>> I Think I Have a Concussion. What Should I Do?
Traumatic Brain Injury: By the Numbers
Not all head injuries result in a TBI, and not all TBIs are caused by direct impact to the head. The most common TBI is from a fall, representing 40.5% of all TBIs. Being struck is the next highest cause at 15.5%. This group includes sports injuries. Car crashes represent 14.3%, assaults cause 10.7% and 19% are other or unknown causes.
TBIs are split into two groups: penetrating TBI, which means the skull is pierced during the injury, and non-penetrating TBI, which is when the skull is hit hard enough from the outside to move the brain inside it.
In 2021, there were 190 reported deaths per day from traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and 214,000 TBI-related hospitalizations in 2020. The highest rates of patients and deaths came from people aged 75 or older, and men were two times as likely to die and three times as likely to be hospitalized with a TBI then women.
>> 5 Steps to Take After Hitting Your Head
How Do Traumatic Brain Injuries Affect the Brain?
TBI can lead to short-term issues with basic functions like thinking, comprehension, communication and action. More severe TBIs can lead to permanent disability or death. While some TBIs are immediate, others can occur gradually over hours, days or weeks.
Brain damage from a TBI can be a “focal injury” – limited to one area of the brain. Or it can be a “diffuse injury” which is more widespread. Brain bleeding and tearing can injure nerve fibers and cause inflammation, metabolic changes and brain swelling.
Types of TBIs:
- Diffuse Axonal Injuries. A common brain injury affecting the brain’s white matter that usually occurs from brain twisting or sudden stops and is common in car crashes, falls and sports injuries.
- Concussion. A mild TBI can take several months to heal or in some cases may never fully heal. A concussion occurs when a blow or jolt makes the brain move quickly forward or backward in the skull. Lots of things can cause a concussion, but they are common in sports injuries, falls and car crashes.
- Hematomas. Bleeding in and around the brain. There are several different classifications of hematomas depending on where the bleeding takes place.
- Contusions. Brain bruising or swelling caused when small blood vessels bleed into brain tissue. They can appear up to a day after the injury. Contusions typically happen when the head slows down abruptly causing the brain to bounce back and forth such as in a high-speed car crash or shaken baby syndrome.
- Skull Fractures. Breaks or cracks in bones that makeup the skull. These are the result of blunt force traumas.
- Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). A neurological disorder that affects thinking, comprehension, communication, movement and can lead to problems with impulse control, depression, confusion and irritability. CTE happens after multiple blows to the head and can take years to develop. CTE can also develop in retired athletes with years of blows to the head. It’s most common in boxers, football players, soccer players, rugby players and wrestlers are also at heightened risk.
>> Is Your Head Injury Leading to Migraine?
What Are My Legal Options with a Head Injury?
Depending on how your head was injured you have a few options legally. If it happened because of another person’s negligence, you may have a case for a personal injury lawsuit. If the injury came at work, while performing typical work functions, you may be eligible for workers’ compensation.
Personal Injury Claims
TBI caused because of another person’s recklessness or carelessness may qualify for a personal injury lawsuit. Our personal injury attorneys have the expertise necessary to help you with the process.
According to Trial Attorney Sean Kiely, mild traumatic brain injuries don’t always show up on tests like MRIs or Cat scans. He said oftentimes, more advanced testing is required, such as diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), which is a test that can measure damage to white matter in the brain. Another important way to show how the injury has affected the victim is to gather information from family members or friends.
“You know it’s very real, what they’re going through, when you speak to their family, and friends of theirs. People that knew them prior to the incident and after the incident and how it has affected their personality,” he says. “Mild TBI is oftentimes no less devastating to a person’s life.”
Workers’ Compensation Claims
Workers injured or ill from an incident that occurs within the range of the workplace is eligible for benefits. Workers’ compensation is there so injured workers can obtain wages lost because of a partial or total disability. It can also cover medical and retraining expenses.
TBI is one of the most common workplace injuries in the United States, with 1.7 million people suffering from TBIs every year, costing over $75 billion. TBI led to 22% of work-related injury deaths between 2003-2008 and 46% of fatal falls at work. Many sufferers are unable to ever return to work.
Between 20-25% of workplace trauma is classified as a traumatic brain injury. Of head injury claims filed in 2018, 60% of them involved TBIs.
Kiely says the trial is about more than compensation, it’s about getting his clients the justice they deserve. However, compensation is important to enable the individual to get on with their life the best they can.
Keches Law Group Can Help
Contact our team of skilled personal injury and workers’ compensation lawyers today if you have suffered from a serious head injury and need to talk to one of our experienced attorneys about a potential case.
Drive Safe: Road Safety Tips for Autumn
