Assessing the mild brain injury

Posted by Saim Khan on February 23rd, 2021

The enigma of mild brain injury

A good example to illustrate this problem with diagnosis would be in the area of mild brain injury arising from some type of toxic exposure, such as carbon monoxide. Identified as the largest killer nationwide, carbon monoxide is so dangerous because you cannot see it, smell it, or taste it. Emergency-room appearances by patients with carbon monoxide exposure is approximately 11,000 cases per year nationwide. As the name suggests, a general small business lawyer can provide legal advice on a wide range of matters.

But this figure does not even scratch the surface of the real dangers of carbon monoxide and its inevitable brain damage. Exposure is essentially either acute or chronic. Acute would be a car running in an enclosed garage that causes death in minutes, or unconsciousness from a sudden major leak in an improperly- installed gas-fueled appliance. If found in time, the person is rushed to the hospital and given intense oxygen treatment. The treatment must be administered within four or five hours, for after that, the brain cells will begin to die, leaving permanent damage.

However, far more common, and ultimately more damaging, is chronic exposure. This would be where a person is exposed over days, weeks or months to low levels, usually emanating from an aged, dirty, or wrongly' installed gas- fueled appliance. Typically the person is unaware of any exposure to a lethal substance. The symptoms are gradual, with some short-term memory loss, difficulty focusing, fatigue, headaches, dizziness. With no indication of any direct cause, the person keeps on using the gas appliance while it worsens the damage each day. Once the cause is finally found, the damage is irreversible.

Ironically, acute exposure is all too often the only type recognized or understood in the medical community. Medical journal articles discussing the effects of carbon monoxide deal only with acute exposure, and do not even differentiate chronic exposure. Yet the chronic effects are subtle and quite different from acute effects. Blood levels will be normal, as the carbon monoxide leaves the blood in a mere four to six hours and chronic exposure is never detected immediately. The chronic injury will be to a different part of the brain, and will be labeled mild, despite its irrevocable long-term effects.

Hence, finding an expert who understands not only' the injury' but the circumstances of its causation is critical to establishing the damages in your case.