What You Should Know About Car Wrecks And TBIs

Every year, Traumatic Brain Injuries, many of which are car crash-related, kill over 60,000 Americans. These injuries are progressive. Initial symptoms, like short-term confusion and disorientation, soon become more serious symptoms, like severe headaches and personality changes. Eventually, these symptoms become unmanageable and often fatal.

The fatality statistics are just the beginning. Over 1.5 million Americans live with TBIs and their effects. Usually, the aforementioned symptoms are debilitating. It’s almost impossible for people to function at home, work, or anywhere else as their physical conditions deteriorate. As a result, these victims badly need the compensation that a Missouri City brain injury attorney can obtain in court.

The Connection Between Car Wrecks and Brain Injuries

So many brain injuries are collision-related because car crashes combine all three TBI causes, which are:

• Trauma: Victims who slam their heads into airbags following collisions might as well slam their heads into cement walls with only a pillow for protection. Airbags, by design, reduce the risk of head injuries. They certainly don’t eliminate the risk.
• Motion: The violent back-and-forth motion causes the brain to repeatedly slam against the inside of the skull. That motion causes bleeding and swelling. This motion also damages nerves in the cervical spine. This injury, known as whiplash, could cause permanent paralysis.
• Noise: Eyewitnesses often say that car crashes sound like explosions. These sudden, loud noises cause shock waves that disrupt brain functions. These shockwaves are the main reason so many Afghanistan and Iraq veterans come home with TBIs.

Car wrecks also cause Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a specific kind of TBI related to chemical changes in the brain. Extremely stressful events, like combat or car crashes, cause these changes.

Initial Diagnosis and Treatment

In medicine, as in most other aspects of life, a fast start often helps ensure a successful outcome. The TBI diagnosis process usually doesn’t involve a fast start.

As mentioned, initial TBI symptoms usually include temporary confusion and disorientation. Accident shock causes these same symptoms. Additionally, adrenaline usually masks injury pain and more advanced head injury symptoms. Therefore, once the initial symptoms are gone, most patients tell their doctors they “feel fine,” and their doctors don’t follow up.

Follow-up might not do any good anyway. Many brain injuries, like whiplash, are soft tissue injuries that are undetectable by X-ray and other common diagnostic tests.

Because of these issues, doctors must treat advanced head injury symptoms. That usually means brain surgery. Obviously, only a few doctors are qualified to perform such a procedure. This surgery is very risky and may not produce the desired results.

Physical Therapy

Brain injury recovery is a very long process that includes extensive physical therapy. Therapists must train uninjured areas of the brain to assume lost functions. That’s why many serious head injury victims must learn to walk again, talk again, and do almost everything again.

Additionally, muscle injury physical therapy doesn’t progress the same way as brain injury physical therapy. Muscles usually get better day by day. But brain injury PT progress comes in fits and starts. A sudden breakthrough might happen after a weeks-long plateau.

Insurance companies usually try to pull the financial plug in these situations. A Missouri City personal injury attorney advocates for victims in these situations, so the money keeps flowing.

Count on a Reliable Fort Bend County Attorney

Injury victims are entitled to significant compensation. For a free consultation with an experienced personal injury attorney in Missouri City, contact the Henrietta Ezeoke Law Firm. You have a limited amount of time to act.