Massachusetts Personal Injury Library

Brain Injury Information and Statistics

What is Brain Injury?

Brain injury, also known as brain damage, can be defined as the destruction or degeneration of the cellular matter of the brain.

Brain injuries are widely regarded as potentially severe conditions, and are actually incredibly common. Here, we’ll take a look at some of the basic information regarding brain injuries, as well as a few brain injury statistics which will help better illustrate the ideas presented.

Categories of Brain Injury

Brain injuries are typically grouped into several categories, which include:

• Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
• Acquired Brain Injury (ABI)
• Open and Closed Head Injury

Each of these types of brain trauma have their own specific symptoms and causes, and many of them have several sub-types of damage as well.

Traumatic Brain Injuries

A traumatic brain injury is one of the most common types of brain injuries, with over 1.4 million cases occurring each year in the United States alone.

Traumatic Brain Injury Statistics

Some recent U.S. TBI statistics include:

• 50,000 deaths per year
• 235,000 hospitalizations per year
• 2,685 child deaths per year

Sub-Types of Brain Injuries

Terms like brain trauma, head injury, and even traumatic brain injury are all blanket terms that cover a wide variety of specific injuries that affect the brain.

Below are a few examples of some specific sub-types of brain injuries that occur each year.

• Diffuse axonal injury, meaning that the damage is widespread.
• Concussion, a type of mild brain injury.
• Cerebral contusion, a bruise on the brain tissue.
• Coup and/or contrecoup injury – a coup injury appears directly under the impacted area, and a countrecoup is an injury that occurs on the opposite side of the impacted area. These are associated with contusions.
• Second-impact syndrome, a rare condition that occurs when a person suffers a second concussion before the symptoms of the first have subsided. This condition is almost always fatal.
• Penetrating injury, a brain injury that occurs when an object penetrates the bone of the head and passes into the brain.
• Shaken baby syndrome is the resulting trauma when a baby is shaken violently, creating an acceleration-deceleration injury.
• Locked-in syndrome is a rare condition that causes a patient to lose control of the muscles in their body, but other parts of the brain are functioning normally.

Treatments of Brain Injury

There are a number of ways to manage any type of brain injury, but common treatment methods include:

• medication
• psychotherapy
• neuropsychological brain injury rehabilitation
• snoezelen
• surgery
• physical implants such as in deep brain stimulation

Each brain injury treatment is recommended based on the severity of the specific condition and should always come from a trained physician who is familiar with the specifics of your case.

Learn more about adjusting to life after suffering a brain injury by visiting our injury description library.

Contacting a Boston Personal Injury Lawyer

A severe brain injury can completely change your life. If you have a sustained a serious and debilitating brain injury through someone else’s negligence in Massachusetts you should contact a Boston personal injury attorney to learn about your rights and determine liability.

What To Ask Your Lawyer?

When you are interviewing personal injury attorneys in your area, do not be afraid to ask critical questions, such as:

1. How long have you been practicing personal injury law?
2. What is the largest settlement or verdict you have obtained for your clients?
3. Do you have experience with brain injury cases?

Kiley Law Group, a personal injury law firm based in Boston and Andover, Massachusetts, has been representing brain injury victims for over 30 years and has secured million-dollar settlements for our clients in a variety of brain injury cases.

The Kiley Law Group founder and star attorney Thomas Kiley takes time when speaking with you about your case and works with you on a contingent fee basis so there are NO FEES unless our trained lawyers win your case.

Call now for a FREE evaluation of your case.

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