Cognitive Reserve

By J. Thomas Anderson

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Traumatic brain injury is a lifelong disease and a dreadful one at that. Even mild traumatic brain injuries (TBI) reduce a brain's cognitive reserve, thereby reducing a person's resiliency following future insults, challenges, injuries, and exposing our clients to increased risk of dementing illnesses, such as Alzheimer's disease, at an earlier age. Cognitive reserve may be presented to the jury as a barrier against the loss of selfhood: in other words, the more brain you have and the more flexible that brain going into any future accident or old age, the better your outcome will be.  

The Cumulative & Compounding Nature of Trauma Events

By J. Thomas Anderson

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The cumulative and compounding nature of trauma events is well documented. Previous exposure to trauma signals a greater risk of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from subsequent trauma. Nevertheless, the defense bar may attempt to attribute your client's brain damage and/or PTSD to a prior wound or insult and thus not compensable in your case. Have none of it. The persistent effect, the chronicity if you will, of traumatic events to the brain and their relation to the rise of brain damage and/or PTSD symptoms following a subsequent aggravation is strongly established. 

CAT 1 -- MINDSTORM OF MISLEADING RATINGS

By J. Thomas Anderson

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Could numerical ratings mislead the insurance industry? Hurricane categories may be fair readings of one storm factor, wind, but that categorical ranking may be an irrational interpretation of an entire hurricane damage system. Just as the National Hurricane Centers (NHC) category system of rating a hurricane's wind power does not adequately prepare the public for the storm's effects, the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) system of rating a brain injury does not adequately rate the medical complications of traumatic brain injury (TBI). Neat little one to fifteen GCS ratings hardly tell the whole story of brain injury, as illustrated by the seventy-one common TBI symptoms listed below which are overlooked by the GCS rating system.

Levels of Traumatic Brain Injury

By J. Thomas Anderson

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The dangerous and subtle nuances of traumatic brain injury are just emerging in the collective public, legal and medical consciousness. In the past, mild concussions were not necessarily equated with traumatic brain injury (TBI), but with increasingly sensitive medical tests and public scrutiny of news from battle fields and playing fields, the understanding of a concussed brain is being expanded to include traumatic injury in all its forms. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), concussion is a type of traumatic brain injury, caused by a bump, blow, or jolt to the head that can change the way your brain normally works. Concussions can also occur from a fall or a blow to the body that causes the head and brain to move quickly back and forth. 

National Safety Council Estimates that At Least 1.6 Million Crashes Each Year Involve Drivers Using Cell Phones and Texting

Note: NSC updated its annual attributable risk estimate in 2011 using new data from National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The updated assessment estimates that at least 23 percent of all traffic crashes - or at least 1.3 million crashes - involve cell phone use per year. An estimated 1.2 million crashes each year involve drivers using cell phones for conversations and at least 100,000 additional crashes can be related to drivers who are texting. Cell phone conversations are involved in 12 times as many crashes as texting.

Traumatic Brain Injury Case Initial Assessment - Just Because Brain Injuries Don't Wear a Cast or Crutches Does Not Mean They Do Not Exist!

Discerning a viable traumatic brain injury in a personal injury case is always an interesting challenge for a personal injury practitioner. When first analyzing a new case, we tend to triage the injuries as though we were member of an emergency response team. Customarily, we start by tallying the obvious and familiar injuries (back, neck, long bones, etc.) Head injuries can be subtle or hidden to all but the newest and most advanced technologies and certainly to the plaintiff's attorney who is not accustomed to prosecuting traumatic brain injury (TBI) claims. Furthermore, some head injuries may not manifest themselves for many years, if not decades, but there are ways to detect and account for these damages. We'll discuss those methods a bit here and in subsequent articles in greater detail.