There are many different symptoms of brain injuries, including:

• Trouble remembering people, places, or events
• Lack of orientation to the time of day, month, or year
• Difficulty remembering the location
• Severe headache
• Loss of consciousness
• Intermittent loss of vision
• Blurry vision
• Bleeding from the head
• Coma

While the severity of the traumatic brain injury will generally scale with the severity of symptoms, this isn’t always the case. For example, some people with brain injuries may not have any symptoms. In addition, one type of brain injury called an epidural hematoma typically starts with a loss of consciousness followed by a “lucid interval” where the patient wakes up and appears fine; however, the injury progresses during this period until the patient loses consciousness again.

If there is any suspicion of a brain injury, patients should make sure that they seek medical attention immediately for imaging procedures. Because of the wide variety of symptoms of brain injuries, it is essential to get an objective picture of what is happening inside the skull. This could include both a CT scan and an MRI. CT scans are significantly faster than MRI scans and are used on an emergent basis to look for broken bones and bleeding in the brain. An MRI scan takes longer but provides more detail regarding potential damage to soft tissue underneath and various brain injuries. An MRI can also help diagnose the various levels of brain injury, grade the damage, and provide some information regarding the prognosis.

While imaging scans are excellent for providing a potential prognosis, brain injuries are notoriously difficult to project. Unlike other tissues in the body, brain tissue does not regenerate to the same degree once it has been damaged. Therefore, medical professionals must wait for patients to wake up after an injury has been sustained or after a surgical procedure. After this, it will be rehabilitation after a traumatic brain injury to get a better idea of what a patient’s new baseline function will be. While some people fully recover from brain injuries, others may never fully wake up.

The road to recovery can be long after suffering a traumatic brain injury. Watch the video below to see how one TBI patient recovered through speech and physical therapy.

A significant amount of attention will be focused on the patient after a brain injury, and rightfully so; however, the stress that a family endures should not be forgotten. The emotional difficulties may be great, the logistical details could be challenging, and a family’s financial situation may be unclear. For this reason, nobody should ever hesitate to ask for help when needed. Reach out to an Antioch brain injury lawyer for assistance with your case.

Brain injuries are serious matters that can leave patients and families searching for answers. If you or a loved one has suffered a traumatic brain injury, please contact our experienced brain injury attorneys at (925) 428-5220 or (800) 404-5400 for friendly, free advice. See our past cases on our Verdicts and Settlements page.

^{Editor’s Note: updated [cha 9.15.23] Photo by Natasha Connell on Unsplash dr [cs 632]}