What Is Considered a Traumatic Brain Injury?

The latest estimates from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that approximately 2.5 million emergency department visits, hospitalizations, and deaths related to TBI occur each year.

Falls, motor vehicle crashes, sports injuries, workplace accidents, and acts of violence continue to be among the leading causes of traumatic brain injuries nationwide. But what is considered a traumatic brain injury?

In simple terms, TBI is a disruption of normal brain function caused by a blow, jolt, bump, or penetrating injury to the head. But with early diagnosis and treatment, you can prevent further complications.

If you are suffering from a TBI, there are different levels of severity, common symptoms, causes, diagnostic methods, and even legal and medical issues that you need to learn about.

The Medical Definition and Classification

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states a traumatic brain injury is a disruption in the usual brain work that can come from a bump, a blow, or a sudden jolt to the head or from an injury that goes into the skull, penetrating head trauma. Mild TBIs are commonly called concussions, even if it is a quick shift in mental state or in consciousness. In mild TBI cases, clinicians report a Glasgow Coma Scale score around 13–15.

Moderate TBI is described as a stretch of time where loss of consciousness comes up. It may last for roughly 30 minutes up to 24 hours, and then post-traumatic amnesia can still be present for as long as a week.

The Glasgow Coma Scale score tends to fall somewhere between 9 and 12. But severe TBI is different. It is the case when unconsciousness runs longer than 24 hours and post-traumatic amnesia remains for more than a week, and the Glasgow Coma Scale drops to 8 or below.

According to research, a significant proportion of individuals diagnosed with "mild" TBI continue to suffer from persisting symptoms lasting months or even years after the initial trauma.

San Diego traumatic brain injury lawyer Ken Sigelman, J.D., M.D. advises that anyone who has sustained a traumatic brain injury must undergo a thorough evaluation to accurately determine the full scope of their condition. This may require extensive testing and screening so the victim and their loved one know what to expect from recovery and beyond.

Types of Traumatic Brain Injury

The type that occurs most frequently is a concussion, which is characterized by a disturbance in brain function even though there is no apparent structural damage to the brain.

Traditional brain imaging tests will show very little to nothing. Even though there are serious symptoms in concussion cases, CT and MRI tests will come out normally since the brain damage occurs at the cellular level.

A contusion is a bruise within the brain tissue itself. It includes bleeding into the brain at the impact site, and because of that, contusions tend to show up on CT imaging. They are also tied to more serious neurological deficits than a concussion.

The diffuse axonal injury, also known as DAI, happens due to the rotational acceleration forces that ultimately result in the stretching and shearing of the white matter within the brain, or the neuronal axons. DAI occurs in high-speed collisions and violent shaking, as well as blasts.

Diffuse axonal injury cannot be detected through a conventional CT scan, and there are special MRI sequences necessary for this.

Penetrating TBI happens when an object gets through the skull and into the brain tissue, so the structures along its path are injured directly. Penetrating trauma from gunshots and other projectiles tends to cause immediate focal damage, and it is associated with a very high mortality rate.

Common Causes in Accident and Injury Contexts

Falls are the most common cause of TBI, especially for the elderly age group above 65 years old. And for working-age adults, automobile accidents continue to be the most common reason for TBI, according to a range of studies.

Sports and recreational activities are an important cause of TBI, as well. This includes football, hockey, soccer, and bicycle injuries, mostly due to the accumulation of head blows and trauma. Assaults play an important role in causing TBIs, particularly in urban settings where there is a higher chance of violence taking place.

Work-related accidents, such as construction sites, also contribute to TBI claims arising from both personal injury lawsuits and worker's compensation claims.

With explosions, blast injuries can result in TBI quite easily due to pressure wave forces passing through the brain tissues despite the absence of an actual impact to the head.

TBI in Personal Injury Claims: Documentation and Damages

In a personal injury lawsuit, proof that TBI is a reimbursable injury requires the availability of medical records to establish the connection between the cause of the injury and its diagnosis and effect.

Neuropsychological testing is one of the essential components of TBI documentation in litigation. This procedure measures weaknesses in cognition, which usually are not detected by imaging methods.

In case the standardized neuropsychological testing reveals substantial impairment, this test result usually becomes objective proof of impairment in day-to-day activities. This result is hard to disregard because this test is numerical rather than narrative.

The long-term results of a TBI that can be recovered as damages in a personal injury case include the future medical costs, like continued neurological and psychological treatment. Victims may also receive compensation for lost earning capacity when the injury makes it hard to work at the same level as before. Add to that the non-economic damages for pain and suffering as well as a reduced quality of life.

The Brain Injury Association of America puts out materials about TBI rehabilitation and the long-term support needs that are useful when building up damages for litigation.

The Symptom Delay Problem

One of the important aspects of TBI is the manifestation of its symptoms. This may either not occur at all or may not occur at its peak level immediately following the incident.

The individual who survived the accident may have manifested TBI symptoms much later on. This can be within hours after the incident and could even extend into days or weeks following the same.

Getting a medical evaluation promptly after any head trauma, even if the first signs feel minor, helps make an essential record that tackles the causation problem before it turns into a bigger one.