A brain injury is damage to the brain that disrupts how its cells communicate and function. It happens when an external force, a loss of oxygen, a bleed, an illness, or a toxin harms brain tissue. The brain controls movement, thought, memory, mood, and the automatic systems that keep a body alive, so the location and severity of the damage shape every symptom that follows.
This section explains the injury itself, not the lawsuit. The pages walk through each kind of brain injury a crash or fall can cause, how doctors grade and test it, what recovery looks like over months and years, and the lasting changes to personality, memory and work. The process pages cover what a brain injury claim is worth and how a life care plan is built.
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What a brain injury claim is worth and how a life care plan prices decades of care.
Brain Injuries Process
The brain injury process is the full arc a head injury follows, starting with the moment of impact and moving through diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, and the brain's own adaptation over time. The first step in understanding that arc is knowing what kind of injury occurred and how doctors classify it, because that classification shapes everything that follows.Life Care Plan for a Brain Injury Victim: Cost Categories, Methodology, and What It Covers
A life care plan for a brain injury is a written, itemized projection of the care a person will need for the rest of their life because of the injury. It lists each need, how often it recurs, how long it lasts, what it costs today, and when equipment must be replaced.
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Acquired Brain Injury vs Traumatic Brain Injury: What’s the Difference?
The difference is scope. Acquired brain injury (ABI) is the broad category for any brain damage that happens after birth and is not hereditary, congenital, or degenerative. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is one type of ABI. The damage comes from an external force: a bump, blow, or jolt to the head, or an object that penetrates the skull.Brain Bleed After an Accident: Subdural and Epidural Hematoma
A subdural or epidural hematoma is a pocket of blood that collects between the brain and the skull after a head injury. Both are types of intracranial hematoma, meaning bleeding inside the head that has clotted into a mass.Brain Swelling and Intracranial Pressure After Traumatic Brain Injury: Causes, Signs, and Treatment
Brain swelling, cerebral edema, and raised intracranial pressure are three related but distinct findings after a head injury. Cerebral edema is excess water inside brain tissue. Intracranial pressure (ICP) is the pressure inside the skull. Edema is one thing that can push ICP up, but the two are not the same finding, and a hospital chart uses the terms differently.Cerebral Contusion After a Crash: Brain Bruise Symptoms, CT Diagnosis, Treatment, Recovery, and When to Go to the ER
A cerebral contusion is a bruise on the brain itself. Small blood vessels inside the brain tissue tear, blood leaks into the tissue, and the surrounding area swells. It is a focal traumatic brain injury, meaning the damage sits in a defined spot rather than spreading through the whole brain.Closed Head Injury vs Open Head Injury
A closed head injury leaves the skull and the dura mater intact. An open head injury breaks through the scalp, the skull, and the dura, so the space inside the skull is exposed to the outside environment. The dura mater is the tough outer membrane that seals the brain and its fluid from everything beyond it.Coma and Vegetative State After a Brain Injury
A coma is a state of deep unconsciousness in which a person cannot be woken, keeps the eyes closed, and shows no sign of awareness of self or surroundings. After a brain injury, coma sits at the most severe end of the spectrum of altered consciousness, but it is a phase rather than a fixed condition.Coup-Contrecoup Brain Injury
A coup-contrecoup brain injury is a traumatic brain injury with damage in two places: directly under the point of impact, and on the opposite side of the brain. The coup lesion sits beneath the blow. The contrecoup lesion sits across from it, on the far wall of the skull.Diffuse Axonal Injury After a Car Accident
Diffuse axonal injury is a traumatic brain injury in which the brain's long nerve fibers, called axons, are stretched and torn across many regions at once. It happens when the brain moves and twists inside the skull during a violent change in speed or direction.Long-Term Complications From a TBI
Learn about the factors that determine the severity of traumatic brain injuries and the long-term outcomes for patients.Neuropsychological Testing After a Brain Injury
Neuropsychological testing is a structured set of standardized tasks that measures how well the brain does its work. That work includes remembering, paying attention, processing information, solving problems, using language, and regulating mood and behavior. After a brain injury, testing produces a detailed profile of which abilities still work at expected levels and which have changed.Pediatric Brain Injury in Children After an Accident
A pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a disruption of a child's normal brain function caused by an external force. That force can be a direct blow, a violent shake, or a sudden stop that whips the head forward and back.Penetrating Head Trauma (Open Head Brain Injury): Definition, Evaluation, Treatment, and Prognosis
Penetrating head trauma is a traumatic brain injury in which an object passes through the scalp, through the skull, and through the dura mater into brain tissue. The breach of the dura is what makes the injury "open." A bullet, a knife blade, a nail, a shard of metal, or a driven fragment of the patient's own skull can all produce it.Personality and Cognitive Changes After Brain Injury: Causes, Symptoms, and Recovery
Personality and cognitive changes after a brain injury are lasting shifts in how a person thinks, feels, and behaves that begin after the brain is damaged. They mark a departure from the person's pre-injury pattern. Families often describe the result as "not the same person," even when the injured person looks well.Phineas Gage: The Man Who Transformed Brain Injury Studies
Phineas Gage was a 25-year-old railroad construction foreman who survived an 1848 blasting accident that drove a 13-pound tamping iron through his left frontal lobe. His survival, and the personality changes that followed, gave medicine its first documented link between physical brain damage and behavior. His case still informs the study of traumatic brain injury and frontal lobe function today.Post-Concussion Syndrome Symptoms and Recovery
Post-concussion syndrome is the label for concussion symptoms that last longer than expected, in current guidance more than four weeks after the injury. It is not a new or second injury, and it does not require a harder blow than an ordinary concussion.Post-Traumatic Epilepsy: Seizures After Brain Injury — Causes, Timeline, and Treatment
Post-traumatic epilepsy (PTE) is a condition of recurrent, unprovoked seizures that begin more than seven days after a traumatic brain injury. The seizures come from the injured brain tissue itself, not from the acute effects of the trauma. That makes PTE an acquired, structural form of epilepsy with a known cause.Raccoon Eyes After a Head Injury: What the Bruising Signals
Raccoon eyes are dark bruising around one or both eyes that appears after a head injury, even when nothing hit the face. The medical name is periorbital ecchymosis. The bruising develops because blood escapes from an injury deeper in the head and settles in the loose tissue surrounding the eye sockets.Rancho Los Amigos Scale: The 10 Levels of Cognitive Recovery After Brain Injury
The Rancho Los Amigos Scale is a clinician-rated scale that describes how a person with a brain injury is thinking, responding, and behaving at a given point in time. Each level names an observable pattern of cognition and behavior, from no response to stimulation up to purposeful, largely independent function.Second Impact Syndrome: Repeat Concussion Risks, Symptoms, Emergency Response, and Return-to-Play Rules
Second impact syndrome (SIS) is rapid, diffuse swelling of the brain after a second head impact lands on an unhealed concussion. The swelling develops within minutes and drives pressure inside the skull to life-threatening levels. It is not a second concussion but a separate, catastrophic event.Skull Fracture Types and Brain Injury Risk
A skull fracture is a break in one or more of the bones that form the cranium. A traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a disruption of the brain's normal function or structure caused by an external force. The two are separate diagnoses.Slow Recovery in Traumatic Brain Injury Cases
A Recent Study in TBI Patients Revealed Slow Recovery A recent study published by TRACK-TBI found that more than half of mild traumatic brain injury patients (MTBI) were still suffering from some injury-related side effects five years after the trauma. This study followed almost 1,200 patients with mild and moderate brain injuries in 18 level-one trauma centers. […]The Most Common Causes of Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI), Ranked by Frequency and Severity
A traumatic brain injury is caused by external force: a bump, blow, or jolt to the head, or an object that penetrates the skull. The force is the cause. The injury is what that force does to brain tissue afterward.Types of Brain Injuries Caused by Car Accidents
A traumatic brain injury (TBI) is any disruption of normal brain function caused by a bump, blow, jolt, or penetrating force to the head. The definition is broader than most people expect. A crash occupant does not need a cracked skull or a visible wound to have a TBI.What Are the Brain Injuries in Football, and Who Is Liable?
Brain injuries in football are concussions, repeated sub-concussive hits, bruising or bleeding inside the skull, and, after years of impacts, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), all caused by a tackle, block, or fall that drives the brain against the inside of the skull. The CDC reports tackle football carries the highest brain injury risk of any contact sport, and youth tackle players take 15 times more head impacts than flag football players. A player hurt by a league or school that ignored its own safety protocol, by a coaching decision, or by defective equipment can bring a negligence or product claim for the injury.What Are the Risks of Concussion Injuries?
Concussions might not be a matter of immediate concern for many people since they present no visual damage. They should be a significant concern, however, because they can result in major harm and even death. This guide explores the risks associated with concussions so you can be prepared should you or a family member suffer […]What Are the Risks of Persistent Headache After an Accident?
Motor vehicle crashes, sports injuries, occupational accidents, assaults, and falls may result in concussions, a type of head injury that causes bruising of the brain. Concussions are also known as mild traumatic brain injuries (TBI). While most concussions resolve on their own within a couple of weeks, approximately 15% of patients with a mild TBI […]What Is a Traumatic Brain Injury?
Every day, people across the U.S. are injured and suffer brain injuries. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in the U.S. in 2021, there were about 190 traumatic brain injury (TBI)-related deaths every day, with over 69,000 TBI-related deaths being recorded in the same year. But what is a traumatic […]What is Anoxic Brain Injury And What Does It Mean For You?
Acquired, non-traumatic brain injuries, such as anoxic brain injuries, occur after birth and account for a significant portion of the more than 2.8 million brain injuries recorded in the country every year. Anoxic brain injury changes the course of the patient’s life as it affects the body’s physical, cognitive, and emotional functions. Anoxic brain injury occurs […]What is the Glasgow Coma Scale and how does it affect TBI Cases?
The Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) objectively describes the extent of impaired consciousness in brain injury victims, proving the severity of a TBI.Why a Normal CT Scan Does Not Rule Out a Brain Injury: DTI and Advanced Imaging
No. A normal head CT after trauma means the scan found no bleeding, skull fracture, or swelling that needs emergency treatment. It does not mean the brain is uninjured. Concussion and mild traumatic brain injury are diagnosed from the mechanism of injury and how the person functions afterward, and a clean CT is consistent with both.