The Chicago personal injury lawyers at Morici, Longo & Associates have recently been retained to represent a motorist who sustained a traumatic brain injury and torn rotator cuff in a car accidents.
Traumatic brain injuries sometimes generically referred to as concussions are a common injury resulting from Chicago car accidents. Brain injuries can occur even during low speed impacts. Crucial to the injury are the forces of acceleration/deceleration of the accident victims head and neck. Injury results from the brain being bantered about against the interior of the skull. The brain can be injured in many ways during an impact, but two of the most common are either from concussive forces against the inside of the skull or scraping of the lower portion of the brain against the roughened and sometimes jagged area at the bottom of the skull's interior.
A closed-head injury patient may experience symptoms that include loss of consciousness, headache, nausea, dizziness, forgetfulness, blurred vision and amnesia. Most doctors will say that loss of consciousness is not necessary to make the diagnosis of a traumatic brain injury or a concussion, but any loss of consciousness or diminishment of cognition is direct evidence of an injury to the brain.
Treatment generally consists of rest in order to allow the brain to heal. Often, neurologists will prescribe near total sensory deprivation for victims of traumatic brain injury. During sensory deprivation, the patient is almost exclusively kept in a "darkened room" with nearly no exertion and no external stimulation. This "deprivation" allows the brain a restful period in which to recuperate.
Most head injury victims eventually recover. Some do not and go on to have permanent symptomology. This group is referred to as "the miserable minority" who are left with a lifetime of symptomology that can include memory loss, forgetfulness, headache, nausea, blurred vision and/or a ringing in the ears medically referred to as tinnitus.
In our recent case, our client, a Chicago police officer, was seriously injured while driving to a burglary in progress when an elderly motorist made a left turn in front of his squad car. Low grade dementia and hearing loss in the Defendant motorist made him oblivious to the flashing lights and siren on the police car. The officer was taken by ambulance to St. Francis Hospital in Evanston. He remains under the care of a neurologist for his severe concussion and continues to suffer blurred vision, memory loss, and word searching among other symptoms. He has recently been diagnosed with a torn rotator cuff by MRI.
If you've been injured in a motor vehicle collision, seek immediate medical attention and the advice of a qualified Chicago personal injury attorney.