Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a serious and costly condition due to the high number of persons injured and the possible long-term effects of TBI. Medical care costs and indirect costs, such as lost productivity, total about 60 billion each year in the United States.

A TBI results from trauma such as an object striking the head or the head striking an object, and/or rapid acceleration and deceleration inside the skull as with a car crash. Injuries may be open (skull penetrated) or closed (skull intact). Damage to the brain may interrupt connections within the brain, affecting how a person thinks, learns, works, and carries on daily activities.
Nationally, there are an estimated 2.2 million cases of TBI each year. Approximately 52,000 people die, 270,000 are hospitalized, and 1.1 million are treated and released from an emergency department.

Common causes of TBI include falls (35 percent), motor vehicle crashes (32 percent), gunshot injuries (12 percent), assaults (11 percent), sports (4 percent), pedestrian injuries (4 percent), and other causes (2 percent).

Persons most frequently hospitalized with TBI are 15- to 24-year-olds, the majority due to motor vehicle crashes, and persons 75- to 84-years-old, due to falls. Violence-related TBI usually involves suicidal behavior, assaults with firearms, shaken baby syndrome, and domestic abuse in families. Males experience TBI twice as often as females.

When someone suffers a head injury, the effects may appear immediately, or days, weeks and even months later. Approximately 60 percent of injuries are not serious and people have no ill effects or have symptoms that subside completely in a few days or weeks. However, people who survive a serious TBI may experience physical, sensory, cognitive, social, behavioral, or other severe limitations that may require long-term rehabilitative and community services.

“Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a national problem and the long-term problems associated with TBI affect persons with TBI, their families, and communities. When someone suffers TBI in a car accident, fire, gas explosion, or other accident, it is important to hire TBI attorneys with experience in obtaining adequate compensation for all of the losses of the victim and the victim’s family,” said attorney Rich Ruohonen. Rich regularly chairs a TBI seminar for lawyers and recently published a traumatic brain injury (TBI) article.

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