What is a traumatic brain injury?
Traumatic brain injury is a major cause of personal injury-related disability and death worldwide. It’s a brain injury caused by one or a combination of the following:
An external force to a person’s head
An object penetrating a person’s skull and entering their brain
Rapid acceleration or deceleration
The main causes of traumatic brain injury include:
Falls
Violence, such as a ‘one punch’ attack
Other causes such as being struck by an object (e.g. while playing sport) or an explosion
Traumatic brain injury is classified by its severity — mild, moderate or severe.
How many people are impacted by traumatic brain injury?
Between 50 and 60 million people globally live with a traumatic brain injury. Over 90% of traumatic brain injuries are classed as ‘mild’. But ‘mild’ doesn’t mean ‘insignificant’. Half of patients hospitalised worldwide with a ‘mild’ traumatic brain injury don’t fully recover and can have life-long cognitive, emotional and physical impacts. Future impacts of chronic traumatic brain injury can include Parkinson’s disease and dementia.
Traumatic brain injury symptoms
Common mild traumatic brain injury symptoms can include:
Headaches
Dizziness
Blurred vision
Problems with memory or concentration
Fatigue and sleep disturbance
Common moderate and severe traumatic brain injury symptoms can include:
Persistent headaches
Slurred speech
Seizures
Significant confusion
Loss of consciousness
Why early and accurate diagnosis of traumatic brain injury is important
Early and accurate diagnosis of traumatic brain injury is important because people can still experience catastrophic impacts of traumatic brain injury without initially displaying symptoms of a severe brain injury.
Timely and accurate diagnosis of traumatic brain injury can:
Ensure early intervention and treatment
Prevent secondary injury
Improve a person’s life outcomes
A secondary injury is where damage to a person’s brain doesn’t immediately or directly coincide with the traumatic brain injury event. An example, which can lead to a person’s death, is a subdural haematoma, when blood builds up between the skull and membrane surrounding the brain.
Technology advances in traumatic brain injury imaging
Better diagnostic tools for traumatic brain injury are of key importance for brain injury claims, to ensure accurate detection and diagnosis at the earliest stage following a person’s head or brain injury.
Significant advancements in neuroimaging for traumatic brain injury over the past few years include:
New Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) sequences to provide crucial information about a person’s brain tissue, brain network activation and connectivity and blood oxygen levels
Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) imaging to assess the extent of neuronal dysfunction, neurodegenerative change and areas of impaired blood flow
Artificial Intelligence (AI) to interpret brain images and detect abnormalities with consistently high speed and accuracy
There’s a trend to combine or integrate information from multiple imaging techniques (such as CT, MRI, PET and AI) to:
Get a comprehensive picture of a person’s traumatic brain injury, structurally and metabolically
Improve the accuracy of a person’s prognosis (the long-term impacts of a traumatic brain injury)
Traumatic brain injury lawyer
Shine Lawyers' Head Trauma team specialise in securing life-changing compensation for Australians with traumatic brain injury. As the only legal team in Australia practising exclusively in brain injury claims and head trauma claims, our lawyers’ unique skill sets combine to make Shine Lawyers best placed to secure life-changing compensation for our clients.
Our legal experts are:
Experienced in navigating highly complex brain injury claims
Dedicated to staying abreast of advances in medical technology relevant to traumatic brain injury
Committed to providing expert legal advice, tailored to each client’s personal circumstances
Committed to supporting each client and their family holistically, from diagnosis to treatment to securing the compensation for traumatic brain injury they deserve
Compensation for traumatic brain injury
Compensation for traumatic brain injury is calculated depending on each person’s injury and circumstances. For most brain injury claims, a monetary value is placed on the gap between your or your loved one’s:
Predicted life path before the traumatic brain injury
Actual life path since the traumatic brain injury
Shine's traumatic brain injury lawyers
Our expert, compassionate traumatic brain injury lawyers can support you every step of the way through your brain injury claim, to secure the life-changing compensation you deserve. All our brain injury claim lawyers work on a No Win No Fee* basis, which means you won't have to pay our legal fees unless we successfully secure compensation for you.
Wherever you are in Australia, get in touch to arrange an obligation-free consultation with a member of our Head Trauma team.
*Conditions apply
