How The Brain Is Hurt

Hello my name is Lawrence Land and I have been representing people with personal injury claims for 35 years. Recently there have been a flood of articles concerning concussion and brain injury, many of them due to the law suits filed against the NFL by former players.

Recently I came across an article posted on google that explains what the brain actually goes through when traumatized, the article is written in such a way as to explain the process in layman's terms that we can all appreciate. For the full article go to www.tbiguide.com

Each year in America, one million people are seen by medical doctors due to a blow to the head. Of that number, 50,000 to 100,000 have prolonged problems that will affect their ability to work and/or affect their daily lives. The majority of people that I see are injured in car accidents. It is important to note that you do not have to be traveling at a high rate of speed to get a head injury. Nor do you have to hit your head on an object (steering wheel, windshield) to injure the brain. Even at moderate rates of speed, traumatic brain injuries can and do occur. Three separate processes work to injure the brain: bruising (bleeding), tearing, and swelling.


If a person is driving a car at 45 miles per hour and is struck head-on by another car traveling at the same rate of speed, the person's brain goes from 45 miles per hour to zero in an instant. The soft tissue of the brain is propelled against the very hard bone of the skull. The brain tissue is "squished" against the skull and blood vessels may tear. When blood vessels tear, they release blood into areas of the brain in an uncontrolled way. For example, one might imagine a dam that breaks, causing water to flood the streets of a town.

Why do medical experts seem so concerned about bleeding in the brain? A major problem is that there is no room for this extra blood. The skull, being hard and brittle, does not expand. So the blood begins to press on softer things--like brain tissue. Brain tissue is very delicate and will stop working properly or may even die off. With large amounts of bleeding in the brain, the pressure will make critical areas of the brain stop working. Areas that control breathing or heart rate could be affected, and a life or death situation could develop within hours of the accident. Some people have sustained a head injury from a car accident and seem "just fine" right after at the accident. Some have even gotten out of the car and directed traffic. Within a short period of time, they began to get more and more confused until they eventually lapse into a coma. So, you can see why Emergency Medical Technicians at the scene of the accident are so anxious to have people go to a hospital following a car accident.