Suffering from a brain injury is often strange and confusing for the victim and their family. When your injuries were caused by someone else, there is no reason to struggle alone. If you or a loved one has suffered a severe brain injury in an accident in Texas, take your case to an experienced Arlington TX brain injury attorney. The Queenan Law firm helps victims of brain injury get compensation.
Brain Injury Symptoms and Results
The immediate effects of brain injury usually include confusion, loss of consciousness, loss of motor function, and nausea – things you might expect when someone takes a blow to the head. However, the long-term effects might seem unusual. These include memory problems, personality changes, incontinence, difficulty making decisions, mood swings, and other strange effects. It is important to remember that the brain is responsible for everything your body thinks, feels, and does – so strange effects are common with brain injury.
While the effects may be strange, the causes are often very straightforward. Strong blows to the head are often the cause of traumatic brain injuries (TBI). While concussions are a form of brain injury, TBI is often much more severe. Brain injuries can occur in two ways: open and closed injuries. These refer to whether the skull breaks or not. In injuries where the skull is penetrated, brain injuries are often much worse.
Common Traumatic Brain Injury Causes
The following are some common ways that people receive traumatic brain injuries. No matter how you received a brain injury, you might have grounds for a personal injury lawsuit. The following are common cases where you might have a case for compensation against the party responsible for your injuries.
Falls
According to Center for Disease Control (CDC) statistics, falls are by far the most common cause of traumatic brain injuries. We might generally think of falls as not that bad – you fall down, and you get back up. In truth, the human body does not handle falls very well, and we are at risk of falling in so many situations. Slip and falls can actually cause intense injuries if we hit our head on the way down. Between 2006 and 2010, the CDC accounted for 781,389 emergency room visits for brain injuries caused by falls. The very young and very old are especially at risk for brain injury in falls.
Objects
When the skull is struck by or struck against an object, there is a huge risk of injury. Especially if the object penetrates the skull, the brain is vulnerable to damage. This can happen in many ways, including construction accidents. During a fall, your head could hit a wall on the way down, which might have been included in these statistics. Flying objects and falling objects could hit you in the head, causing injury. Whether or not an object can break the skull depends on the size and force of the object. The more concentrated the surface area at the point of impact, the higher change it could break the skull. For instance, a sharp corner of a falling piece of concrete is more likely to penetrate the skull than a flat side of the same piece.
Car Accidents
Car accidents are the third leading cause of traumatic brain injury. There are many moving objects involved in a car accident – including your head. When your body suddenly stops, your head may still move, since it is not restrained by a seat belt. This means your head could impact the steering wheel, walls, or dash, depending on how you are seated. Other objects and cars may break the windshield and strike occupants. Depending on what the car hits, these objects could be sharp, flat, heavy, or light – but always have a risk of serious injury.
Assault
Unfortunately, the risk that someone else might intentionally injure you is always a possibility. While these kinds of issues are usually handled by the criminal law, you still have an option to take your attacker to court and file a civil case against them. This may help you get compensation for your injuries. This is actually the highest cause of brain injury for people aged 15-24, who suffer about 16,364 brain injuries from assault each year (between 2006 and 2010). This beats the number of injuries from falls and car accidents by about 774 and 1,044 injuries per year, respectively.
Other causes of injury (and unknown causes) account for around 47,741 brain injuries per year. Across all brain injuries, there are a total of around 358,953 injuries per year, according to the CDC statistics.
Traumatic Brain Injury Attorney in Texas
If you or a loved one has been injured in an accident and suffered a traumatic brain injury, you might have a strong case for compensation. An Arlington TX personal injury lawyer at The Queenan Law Firm, P.C., represent injured victims throughout the Arlington, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston areas. We also help the surviving family of people who were killed in accidents get compensation for their losses. For a free consultation with our Midland injury lawyers, call (817) 476-1797.