What is Traumatic Brain Injury?

The following information on "What is Traumatic Brain Injury?" is provided by the law firm of Pritzker | Ruohonen. Our lawyers are regular speakers on traumatic brain injury legal issues. Partner Rich Ruohonen has recently had an article published entitled ""Debunking the Top 10 Myths of Traumatic Brain Injury: Effective Cross Examination of the Defense Neuropsychologist." To contact an attorney at Pritzker | Ruohonen, please call toll-free at 1-888-377-8900 or submit the firm's free case consultation form.

What is traumatic brain injury? There is no universally recognized definition of traumatic brain injury (TBI). However, in 1986 the Brain Injury Association of America adopted the following definition of TBI that has since been enacted as a statutory definition by serveral states:

Traumatic brain injury is an insult to the brain, not of a degenerative or congenital nature but caused by an external physical force, that may produce a diminished or altered state of consciousness, which results in an impairment of cognitive abilities or physical functioning. It can also result in the disturbance of behavioral or emotional functioning. These impairments may be either temporary or permanent and cause partial or total functional disability or psychosocial maladjustment.

What is Mild Traumatic Brain Injury?

A rapid or violent movement if the head is enough to cause traumatic brain injury. Mild closed head injury can occur after a severe neck trauma, even without the head actually striking any surface (Bernad).

Rapid deceleration of the head commonly causes non-contact brain injuries. Deceleration injuries occur when the head itself is moving rapidly and rapidly decelerates, often from striking an object. The deceleration then thrusts the brain forward in the cranium (Lezak). A common example of a non-contact deceleration injury is a whiplash injury where the brain rapidly decelerates, but “without actually striking another object" (Adams). The movement of the brain within the skull puts strains on nerve fibers and blood vessels. The fibers and vessels can stretch to point of shearing, which causes microscopic lesions (Lezak).

The following definition of mild traumatic brain injury is from the Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee of the Head Injury Interdisciplinary Special Interest Group of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine (Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation, 1993:8(3):86-87):

A patient with mild traumatic brain injury is a person who has had a traumatically induced physiological disruption of brain function, as manifested by at least one of the following:

any period of loss of consciousness;

any loss of memory for events immediately before or after the accident;

any alteration in mental state at the time of the accident (e.g., feeling dazed, disoriented, or confused); and

focal neurological deficit(s) that may or may not be transient, but where the severity of the injury does not exceed the following:

post-traumatic amnesia (PTA) not greater than 24 hours

after 30 minutes, an initial Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) of 13-15

loss of consciousness of approximately 30 minutes or less.

This definition of trauma can include:

the head being struck

the head striking an object

the brain undergoing an acceleration/deceleration movement (i.e., whiplash) without direct external trauma to the head

References:

1.. Peter G. Bernad, Closed Head Injury: A Clinical Sourcebook, (Matthew Bender 1998) at 2.

2. Murial D. Lezak, Neuropsychological Assessment, 2d ed. (Oxford Univ. Press. 1983) at 169.

3. “Traumatic Brain lnjury Study" by Dr. Kenneth M. Adams and Steven H. Putnam, for the Michigan Catastrophic Claims Association (1989) at 11.

4. Lezak at 167.

We hope this information about traumatic brain injury has been helpful to you. Contact us for a free consultation if you have any questions. For an online consultation, you may fill out our online consultation form. We are a national law firm and represent clients throughout the United States. Our offices are located in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

To learn more about traumatic brain injury, please see the following:

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