Traumatic Brain Injury

Frequently Asked Questions about Traumatic Brain Injury

What is Traumatic Brain Injury?

What Types of Cognitive and Communication Problems Can Result From a Traumatic Brain Injury?

What Are Common Symptoms of a Traumatic Brain Injury?

What Causes These Symptoms?

How Is A Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Detected?

Is A Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Always Properly Diagnosed?

How Is Traumatic Brain Injury (TBIs) Treated?

How Frequently Does Traumatic Brain Injury Occur?

What Are My Legal Rights Concerning a Trauamtic Brain Injury Accident?

Traumatic brain injury is sudden physical damage to the brain. The head forcefully hitting an object, a closed head injury, may cause the damage or by something passing through the skull and piercing the brain, like a gunshot wound, penetrating head injury. The major cause of traumatic brain injury is from motor vehicle accidents. Other causes include falls, sports injuries, violent crimes, and child abuse.

Physical, behavioral, or mental changes are dependent upon which areas of the brain are injured. Most often focal brain damage is done, which is damage confined to just a small area of the brain. This point is usually where the head has hit an object. Closed head injuries often times causes scattered brain injuries or damage to other areas of the brain. Diffuse damage is the result of an impact causing the brain to move back and forth against the skull. Frontal and temporal lobes, responsible for speech and language, are often the most affected because they sit in the areas of the skull that allows more room for the brain to shift and sustain injury. Speech and language is therefore affected, as well as voice, swallowing, walking, balancing, and coordination difficulties and changes in the ability to smell and in memory and cognitive skills.

What Types of Cognitive and Communication Problems Can Result From a Traumatic Brain Injury?

Cognitive and communication problems that result from traumatic brain injury vary from person to person. These problems depend on many factors, which include an individual's personality, pre-injury abilities, and the severity of the brain damage.

The effects of the brain damage are generally greatest immediately following the injury. However, some effects from traumatic brain injury may be misleading. The newly injured brain often suffers temporary damage from swelling and a form of "bruising" called contusions. These types of damage are usually not permanent and the functions of those areas of the brain return once the swelling or bruising goes away. Therefore, it is difficult to predict accurately the extent of long-term problems in the first weeks following traumatic brain injury.

Focal damage, however, may result in long-term, permanent difficulties. Improvements can occur as other areas of the brain learn to take over the function of the damaged areas. Children's brains are much more capable of this flexibility than are the brains of adults. For this reason, children who suffer brain trauma might progress better than adults with similar damage.

In moderate to severe injuries, the swelling may cause pressure on a lower part of the brain called the brainstem, which controls consciousness or wakefulness. Many individuals who suffer these types of injuries are in an unconscious state called a coma. A person in a coma may be completely unresponsive to any type of stimulation such as loud noises, pain, or smells. Others may move, make noise, or respond to pain but be unaware of their surroundings. These people are unable to communicate. Some people recover from a coma, becoming alert and able to communicate.

In conscious individuals, cognitive impairments often include having problems concentrating for varying periods of time, having trouble organizing thoughts, and becoming easily confused or forgetful. Some individuals will experience difficulty learning new information. Still others will be unable to interpret the actions of others and therefore have great problems in social situations. For these individuals, what they say or what they do is often inappropriate for the situation. Many will experience difficulty solving problems, making decisions, and planning. Judgment is often affected.

Language problems also vary. Problems often include word-finding difficulty, poor sentence formation, and lengthy and often faulty descriptions or explanations. These are to cover for a lack of understanding or inability to think of a word. Many have difficulty understanding multiple meanings in jokes, sarcasm, and adages or figurative expressions. Individuals with traumatic brain injuries are often unaware of their errors and can become frustrated or angry and place the blame for communication difficulties on the person to whom they are speaking. Reading and writing abilities are often worse than those for speaking and understanding spoken words. Simple and complex mathematical abilities are often affected.

The speech produced by a person who has traumatic brain injury may be slow, slurred, and difficult or impossible to understand if the areas of the brain that control the muscles of the speech mechanism are damaged. This type of speech problem is called dysarthria. These individuals may also experience problems swallowing. This is called dysphagia. Others may have what is called apraxia of speech, a condition in which strength and coordination of the speech muscles are unimpaired but the individual experiences difficulty saying words correctly in a consistent way.

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What Are Common Symptoms of Traumatic Brain Injury?

A traumatic brain injury can affect a person cognitively, physically and emotionally.

Cognitive symptoms of traumatic brain injury may include:

• short term memory loss and/or long term memory loss
• slowed ability to process information
• trouble concentrating or paying attention for periods of time
• difficulty keeping up with a conversation;
• other communication difficulties
  • such as word finding problems
  • spatial disorientation
  • organizational problems and impaired judgment
  • unable to do more than one thing at a time

Physical symptoms of traumatic brain injury may include:

• seizures of all types
• muscle spasticity
• double vision or low vision, even blindness
• loss of smell or taste
• speech impairments such as slow or slurred speech
• headaches or migraines
• fatigue, increased need for sleep
• balance problems
• pain

Emotional symptoms of traumatic brain injury may include:

• a lack of initiating activities, or once started, difficulty in completing tasks without reminders
• increased anxiety
• depression and mood swings
• denial of deficits
• impulsive behavior
• more easily agitated
• egocentric behaviors- difficulty seeing how behaviors can affect others

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What Causes These Symptoms?

While neurological testing may not reveal physical evidence of the damage causing the symptoms, the trauma sustained does compromise the neuro-mechanisms of visual information processing. The terms "whiplash" and "neck sprain" have been used to describe those injuries that result from auto accidents, where even if the head avoids striking something, the hyperextension and hyperflexion of the neck in response to impact forces, can cause damage. In the neck, muscles and ligaments undergo stretching and strain, or in more violent injuries, actual tearing. TBI may also cause injury to the arteries, stretching of the nerves, and more rarely, injuries to the vertebral column itself. These sheering or stretching forces generated as a result of trauma are responsible for the soft tissue damage that leads to the eye muscle coordination problems an symptoms that patients experience.

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How Is A Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Detected?

The assessment of cognitive and communication problems is a continual, ongoing process that involves a number of professionals. Immediately following the injury, a neurologist or another physician may conduct an informal, bedside evaluation of attention, memory, and the ability to understand and speak. Once the person's physical condition has stabilized, a speech-language pathologist may evaluate cognitive and communication skills, and a neuropsychologist may evaluate other cognitive and behavioral abilities. Occupational therapists also assess cognitive skills related to the individual's ability to perform "activities of daily living" (ADL) such as dressing or preparing meals. An audiologist should assess hearing. All assessments continue at frequent intervals during the rehabilitative process so that progress can be documented and treatment plans updated. The rehabilitative process may last for several months to a year.

Is A Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Always Properly Diagnosed?

Some TBI cases are difficult to detect because even a CT scan can show proper brain functioning when there is in fact brain damage. Brain damage is not just a result of unconsciousness, and headaches and mood swings are both symptoms that can come from a closed head injury. Some symptoms may not appear until much after the injury. Often times neurologist reserve their time for only serious head injuries and a regular physician may not catch a problem in a routine office visit.

How Is Traumatic Brain Injury (TBIs) Treated?

It is best to begin treatment early when cognitive and communication problems arise from a TBI. If a hospital visit resulted from the injury treatment usually begins there. A therapist will work with the individual to help them focus on improving their orientation to the surrounding situation and to stimulate speech and understanding. Oral motor exercises are used when there is speech and swallowing problems. Long-term rehab can be assessed by the individual’s injuries and needs. There is rehab specific to people with traumatic brain injury, including speech language pathologists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and neuropsychologists.

Rehab will help a TBI sufferer reach the highest level of independent functioning that they can, depending on the seriousness of the accident. Therapy works on restoring lost skills. Some people lose abilities after a traumatic brain injury and will have to learn to compensate for them. The most difficult part of traumatic brain injury is receiving the proper treatment. If a head injury does not result in a hospitalization and the injury is a closed head injury, failure to diagnose a problem during an office visit may result.

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How Frequently Does Traumatic Brain Injury Occur?

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 1 million cases of traumatic brain injury occurred in the United States in 1995-1996. Of those, 230,000 people were hospitalized and survived and 50,000 people died. Around three quarters of TBI survivors are diagnosed as having suffered a mild to moderate injury.

What Are My Legal Rights Concerning a Traumatic Brain Injury Accident?

Traumatic brain injury sufferers often face an array of medical, legal and financial issues. Some TBI sufferers may appear unharmed, especially with a closed head injury, but may need physical, cognitive, and emotional treatment. If you have questions regarding a traumatic brain injury that you, or a family member, have suffered from, please contact us. The best way to determine if you, or someone you know is entitled to compensation due to a traumatic brain injury is to contact us so a traumatic brain injury attorney can discuss your individual case with you.

If you, or someone you know, have suffered any cognitive, physical, and/or emotional symptoms as a result of a traumatic brain injury and would like to know if you are entitled to receiving compensation, please contact us !! A Traumatic Brain Injury Lawyer will be in touch with you as soon as possible.

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