We are seeing increasing numbers of traumatic brain injuries (TBI) or concussions, resulting from car and other motor vehicle accidents. A traumatic brain injury can result from hitting your head on a fixed object, but you can suffer a TBI even if your head doesn’t hit anything. In a whiplash-type injury, your head is thrown violently back and forth. This motion can cause the brain to impact with the inside of the skull, resulting in injury.
While a serious head injury may cause unconsciousness or incoherence, a mild traumatic brain injury may not be as obvious. If you’ve been in an accident and you are noticing memory loss, difficulty concentrating, significant changes in mood or speech impairment, you may have suffered a TBI.
Traumatic Brain injury cannot always be diagnosed by MRI or other imaging. Often it is diagnosed by a series of cognitive tests administered by a medical specialist. These tests can document the extent of a TBI as well as guide your doctors in determining an appropriate course of treatment.
A new study now confirms that the over all incidence of traumatic brain injury is increasing, and surprisingly that men take three times longer than women to recover from the same types of TBI. If you think you have a TBI you should take it very seriously and immediately seek medical treatment.
Often insurance companies try to dismiss the seriousness of traumatic brain injury. Because the injury may not show up on diagnostic imaging, they will try to minimize the injury, or even suggest that there is no injury. If you have suffered a TBI as a result of a car accident or any other motor vehicle accident, you need the services of an experienced personal injury attorney to protect your rights.
If you have any other questions about TBI or any other issue relevant to personal injury law, check out our Seattle personal injury website or give us a call. We have been handling brain injury cases for more than 15 years, and we can answer your questions.