Traumatic brain injuries can cause a lifetime of complications to their victims. At issue with brain injuries is that the brain is so complex and sensitive that injuries can be uniquely devastating and unpredictable.
Three classifications and three long-term outlooks
Primarily, when looking at head injuries, medical professionals tend to simplify their complexity into three classifications. Each classification has its own general prognosis and recovery expectations. They are:
- Mild: These are more minor head injuries without a loss of consciousness. They may be minor concussions. They are serious in that you may have an altered mental state for a short time, but doctors expect you to recover fully.
- Moderate: These are significant injuries with some loss of consciousness. You may expect an extended recovery, and there may be long-term mental effects. However, a person may be able to return to most day-to-day activities with little change.
- Severe: This this the most devastating level of traumatic brain injury. A person with a severe brain injury may never recover. They may have long-term disabilities and require extensive treatment for the rest of their lives.
These classes by no means mean that one injury is more devastating than another. The unpredictability of these injuries can lead to tremendous variability in the prognosis of patients with similar mechanisms of injury.
Help is available
The recovery from an accident is unpredictable, and complications are common with any injury. No matter how severe the brain injury, mild to severe, you may need to fight to recover the compensation you need to move forward.
