Chicago Brain Injury Lawyer Blog

Last week our Chicago brain injury lawyers read about a new lawsuit alleging that a newborn suffered a birth injury that may result in long-term brain damage. The suit essentially argues that the medical team at the hospital failed to properly take into the account the fact that a child is more likely to be born with a larger birth weight to a mother who has gestational diabetes.

According to Injury Lawyer News, the mother in this case was diagnosed with gestational diabetes in the middle of the pregnancy. This is usually caused by pregnancy hormones that interfere with the ability of insulin to work properly. The result is higher glucose levels in the mother’s blood. The expectant mother’s symptoms are often mild and can usually be controlled. However, there are some risks for the child, including the fact that the baby is more likely to be larger than normal at birth.

Large children are born all the time without complications, but they do present increased risk of complications during the pregnancy. Their bodies have a somewhat harder time exiting the birth canal because of their size. Doctors must account for these risks and make appropriate accommodations when planning for the pregnancy.

This Case

Unfortunately, the family in this case claims that the medical team did not make those necessary accommodations. As a result, the child’s shoulder became stuck on the mother’s pelvic bone. The medical team was forced to use very aggressive measures to free the child. They were able to get the child out, but not before the infant suffered serious injury. The shoulder dystocia lead to a brachial plexus injury, with the child’s nerve bundle damaged as the medical team tried to pull her out.

In addition, the complaint filed in the suit claims that the infant suffered a brain injury as a result of fetal hypoxia.

Hypoxia

Stem Cell Bank Launches New Trials Which Could be used to Treat Birth Injuries

The Daily Rx took a look this week at the long-term consequences of traumatic brain injuries on young adults—particularly the damage caused by concussions in sports. This is certainly a hot topic these days as parents, coaches, trainers, athletic directors, and other involved parties seek to ensure that they are not placing young players in more dangerous situations than they initially suspect. Each Illinois brain injury lawyer at our firm understands the underappreciated consequences of even minor head trauma.

The new story explores a recent study that examined the long-term learning ability of players who experience concussions.

The research was conducted by a doctor of the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. It involved following 214 NCAA Division I college athletes. The participants were athletes in the contact sports most closely associated with these injuries: football and ice hockey. Those athletes were then compared to athletes in non-contact sports to get a proper gauge on the actual long-term effect of participation in these physical sports. As part of the research effort the contact players worse special helmets that included data recordation devices to measure the “acceleration-time history of the head following impact.”

All participants—those in contact and non-contact sports—were measured before and after the effort with a cognitive screening battery test and a separate neuropsychological test battery. Together these tools are helpful ways to get an idea of the brain’s workings, speed, and accuracy on basic measures.

Our Chicago brain injury attorneys appreciate that one of the most interesting aspects of this research is that all those players in the study who suffered an actual concussion were disqualified from consideration. In other words, the entire focus of this effort was on the minor head contact that doesn’t rise to the level of a concussion.

What were the findings?

The short answer is that the findings were mixed. On one hand the cognitive difference between each group was nonexistent—there was no noticeable detriment for the contact athletes.

But the doctor leading the effort noted that they “did find that a higher percentage of the contact sport athletes had lower scores than would have been predicted after the season on a measure of new learning than the non-contact sport athletes.

What does that mean?

It is hard to parse out exactly what the long-term harmful effects might be. There may be more detail available when the study is published in the next issue of the American Academy of Neurology. Essentially though, it seems that the finding suggest that there is no noticeable difference in most cognitive measures between those who play contact sports and non-contact sports. The only variable where there is a difference is on measures that seek to determine ability to learn new things. The article did not explain the size of the difference. However, the fact that there was any statistically significant difference at all is alarming.

Of course, each brain injury lawyer at our firm knows that it is important not to forget that these differences refer only to those who played contact sports and did not suffer a concussion. The consequences for those who actually suffer a concussion are clearly more far-reaching.

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Our Illinois brain injury attorneys have often shared the myriad of ways that traumatic brain injuries strike which can be connected to the negligence of another. A lawsuit filed by well-known 80s rocker and reality star Bret Michaels highlights one of those ways.

According to a report by NBC Chicago, the rocker was at the Tony Awards show—the annual Broadway honors—when he was hit in the head by a piece of stage equipment. The incident was actually aired—becoming a viral online video. As evident in the video, the set piece hit the musician as he was leaving the stage following his band’s performance as part of the show. The injury did not at first seem as severe as it eventually became, leaving the signer with a lip injury and a broken nose. However, as often happens in accidents involving head trauma—the actual injury was more severe than initially suspected.

In Michaels case, the documents filed with the court which initiated the lawsuit suggests that the injury also caused bleeding on the brain. He was hospitalized the following year, with doctors finding that he had a brain hemorrhage. He eventually suffered a stroke. The accident almost killed him.

Fortunately the signer was able to pull through, but not without going to a lengthy ordeal. He eventually filed a brain injury lawsuit against the organizers of the Tony Awards for their role in the event which led to the stage accident. CBS Broadcasting was also named in the suit. The singer claimed that he was not warned that there would be a set change, meaning that he was not prepared to avoid the accident which ended up causing him such severe injuries.

This week the case was finally settled out of court. The suit had originally been filed in March of 2010. After a few jurisdictional issues and a mediation session, the parties reached consensus on a resolution. No individual details were provided about the agreement other than that it was amicable.

There were issues in this case about the proper amount of compensation, because the singer claimed that the injury hampered his ability to perform future shows. In general negligence lawsuits seek to compensate victims for all of the harm caused—including lost future wages. However, there is often contention on the specific amount of that future compensation. The disagreement might be particularly strong in cases like this one with very flexible future earnings figures.

This case is a testament to the often hidden, dormant nature of many brain injuries. Each Illinois brain injury lawyer at our firm appreciates that many residents have head injuries strike seemingly without any long-term injury. The injury instead does not surface until much later. Many residents never actually make the connection between the original incident and the injury. The only way to truly protect against this is to seek out proper medical treatment whenever one is in an accident with head trauma. Little is lost by being cautious with these sorts of injuries.

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Tort reform efforts take many forms. However, our Illinois brain lawyers know that many people associate “damage cap” laws as synonymous with tort reform. That is because more focus has been given to those particular caps than to any other tort reform effort. However, it is important for local residents to know that there are many other issues that might affect the ability of private citizens to access the civil justice system. Most of those efforts have one general goal: making it harder for community members to actually hold others fully accountable for the consequences of their negligent, reckless, and intentional misconduct.

For example, one popular new tort reform measure is often referred to as “Early Offer” legislation. When tort reform supporters discuss this concept they usually talk generally about trying to make the resolution of medical malpractice claims simpler. What the proponents of the bill generally do not want people to do is look at the actual details of the proposal, because, as usual, “the devil is in the details.”

Our Chicago brain injury lawyers recently read the testimony of Joanne Doroshow at a state committee hearing considering the proposal. Doroshow is the executive director of the Center for Justice and Democracy. She explained that the proposal would take away victim’s rights in a manner that “is so dismissive of constitutional rights and potentially calamitous for injured patients.”

She continued that the early offer legislation “[F]louts the basic notions of fairness. It would tilt the legal playing field so dramatically in favor of insurers as to essentially eviscerate patients’ right to adequate compensation.”

So what is the problem with the legislation?

The main issue is that the law essentially tries to get patients to “sign into” the early offer system without any real idea about what their long-term injuries might be, usually without having any real opportunity to discuss the ramifications of their conduct with their legal professionals.

Once in this system, the patients will be faced with a string of conflicts, at their own disadvantage. The medical-defendant is able to select doctors to evaluate damages with serious complications for families trying to get future medical expenses covered. In addition, by entering the system the patients give up all rights to non-economic damages.

Every way you look at it, the law attempts to coerce unknowing patients into signing away their own rights.

Brain injury lawyers of all stripe—all lawyers, in fact—understand that a bedrock principle of the legal system is a commitment to fairness. Part of that commitment involves not creating systems that will knowingly coerce certain individuals into making decisions against their interests. It is not enough to say that technically those involved can opt out of the system, particularly when the system sets up a system with trusted individuals applying pressure on those individuals to act against their own interests. The law can be complicated. These types of laws try to take advantage of that complication by getting patients to unknowingly act in ways that are often not in their best interests.

All lawyers, on both sides, should know that these tactics are inherently unethical. They should never be enshrined in law.

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Each Chicago brain injury lawyer at our firm knows that verdicts in these cases are sometimes significant. Depending on the scope of the harm, the effects on the individual’s life, and many outside variables, the final verdict is often staggering. The amount always seems particularly large when delivered at the end of a case because it seeks to account for the consequences of the harm over the course of a lifetime in a single amount. That means that younger victims sometimes lead to higher verdicts, because the actual consequences will last for decades.

That was likely the case in a new brain injury case involving a birth injury on a newborn. The trial in the case recently ended with the jury reaching a large verdict for the plaintiff.

The Pott’s Mercury recently summarized the situation. According to the story the mother of the child in the case went to the hospital a few weeks before her due date. Medical records indicate that she was showing signs of placental abruption. This occurs when the placenta—which provides nutrients to the child—leaves the uterine wall. Of course, a fetus in the womb must have those nutrients; when there is a problem with the placenta, the consequences for the child can be life-threatening. That necessitates quick action on the part of medical professionals when dealing with the matter.

In this case, before taking any steps, the woman’s doctor performed an ultrasound. However, when performing the ultrasound the doctor did not detect a fetal heartbeat. That led him to conclude that the child was not alive. He even told the mother that the child had died.

In reality that child was still alive, but the ultrasound machine itself or the administration of the test was faulty, leading to the mistaken reading. The consequences for the child were severe. It wasn’t until over eighty minutes later—after an ultrasound technician uncovered the error—that emergency steps were taken and the child was born. But the baby did not survive unscathed from that significant delay. He was born with severe spastic quadriplegia cerebral palsy. He will require costly and significant care throughout his life.

In addition to the ultrasound equipment issues, part of the problem was hospital negligence. Attorneys during the case argued that it was unacceptable for the facility to not have an ultrasound technician in the hospital at the time needed. This added to the delay and contributed to the underlying harm the resulted.

The family contacted a medical malpractice lawyer and filed a brain injury lawsuit. The jury in the case was presented all of the evidence about the ultrasound equipment, the doctor’s conduct, and all possible defenses presented by the hospital and medical professional. After weighing all of that the jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff. Specifically, the jury felt that the overall conduct and harm necessitated a verdict for $78.5 million dollars.

Of course, the size of this verdict will undoubtedly be taken out of context and used as a rallying cry by some to try to pass legislation that takes away the rights of all plaintiffs using the civil justice system. Hopefully that tendency can be avoided.

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The Illinois brain injury lawyers at our firm have helped residents hurt in many different kinds of accidents. Premise liability law is implicated when the accident occurred after a slip and fall on someone else’s property. Basic tort and negligence law is at the heart of auto accident cases where residents suffer a traumatic brain injury after a collision. Medical malpractice is involved when doctors, nurses, or other medical teams make mistakes that lead to the brain damage. However, in all of these cases there is one commonality in the legal case; the presence of insurance companies.

The insurance world is at the heart of the civil justice system, because most actual payment following these injuries are made by these companies. This shouldn’t be too big a surprise, because that is the whole point of insurance, to provide payment to those who suffer serious harm unexpectedly. That is exactly why it is the insurance companies who are at the forefront of so-called “tort reform” efforts. These companies want to pay out at as little as possible. Not satisfied simply defending lawsuits where they feel appropriate and making payments based on the decision of the jury, these companies want to stack the deck and simply make it impossible for the jury to reach certain decisions at all.

Unfortunately, however, our Chicago brain injury attorneys know that this insurance involvement can lead to a wide range of problems, often inhibiting a basic sense of fairness—as tort reform efforts suggest.

An underlying problem, according to a new story on the insurance industry in The Atlantic, is these companies have completely lost touch with the whole purpose of the effort. In the past, the whole point of insurance was a community-wide effort, coming together to leverage the resources of everyone in order to provide security for everyone. In the past, it involved mutual benefit for all involved. Everyone made small payments. Payouts were made when any participant faced harm per the terms of the agreement, and when profits were made they were equally distributed to those same individuals.

That model is not quite still around.

That is because, as our Illinois brain injury attorneys know well, the insurance industry has become a major corporate powerhouse. Instead of a community-effort to help all those involved, the focus is on maximizing profits. This has change has also shifting considerable power to the few executives in charge of these companies. Not surprisingly they make rules that handsomely reward themselves. The current CEO of Liberty Mutual, for example, made more than $200 million to himself in compensation over the past four years alone.

The article argues that as the idea of a mutual pooling of resources changed into a profit-making corporate entity, so too changed the company’s former commitment to improving the overall public welfare. In the past, the insurance was owned by those who had an actual stake in the assets. In that way, all had personal incentive to limit payouts by improving on a wide-range of safety changes that they themselves also benefitted from. However that has changed. The article sums up the current situation: “Insurance returned to the business of selling policies to people who had no stake in the assets on which they wagered. Even worse, although the gains accrued to private individuals, the public remained on the hook for any failures.”

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When discussing Illinois traumatic brain injuries most focus is around the medical advances related to preventing and treating the consequences of the harm. In addition, we often mention the legal issues that sometime are at play with those who suffer these injuries. Traumatic brain injuries are often caused by negligent conduct. Whenever negligence is at play, the law often allows those hurt an avenue to seek redress for their losses in an attempt to make them as “whole” as possible after the injury.

But beyond the medical and legal discussions, it is crucial not to forget that traumatic brain injuries have very real day-to-day consequences on individual families and their communities. The real-life effects of these injuries were the subject of a recent article in the Rocklin & Roseville Today. The article shared the story of one woman in that area who fell victim to one of these injuries. The fifty-four year old woman was walking in a crosswalk to get across a street. She was only a few steps from the sidewalk when a large van came upon her. The driver of the van did not see her and so the van slammed into her body.

She suffered a serious brain injury. The consequences were severe. The woman explains that she and her husband own a family farm. Before the accident the woman was counted on to do a wide range of tasks to keep the farm going, from managing the hog born and driving a tractor to doing the family income taxes.

But that all changed after the accident. She notes that she “couldn’t drive a tractor. It just would have taken too much concentration since you have to use both feet. So my husband ended up having to sell his cows and get a (second) job. I wasn’t able to help him farm anymore. So what was he going to do?” Our Chicago brain injury attorneys know that many families in our area have had their work and financial situations turned upside down as a result of injuries like this which happen the blink of an eye—often via car accidents.

The family in this case had three children: two teenagers and six year old boy at the time of the accident. As a result of the injury the children’s lives were also turned around. They were forced to take on much more responsibility. Housework, for example, needed to be done even though the woman couldn’t do many of the tasks herself.

The community as a whole was also affected. The woman had founded a free tax counseling services for the elderly and those with low incomes. However, she could no longer do the necessary volunteer work after the injury. She even had to stop her active role in the local PTA because of the consequences of the TBI.

If you or a loved one has suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident or any other incident, please remember that help is available. In certain circumstances legal actions might be appropriate to ensure that resources are available to help ensure recover occurs as quickly and fully as possible.

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Our Chicago brain injury lawyers are proud to work within the civil justice system in our area to help those who have been hurt in a wide range of ways by the misconduct of others. Traumatic brain injuries occur in many ways which should have been prevented had others acted reasonably. Car drivers fail to follow basic road safety rules and get in accidents that hurt others. Property owners fail to keep their premises safe, leading others to unsuspectingly fall and suffer serious injury. Medical care providers often make egregious errors that severely harm the patients who were relying on them.

In each of these cases, those hurt (or their families if an individual is killed) are constitutionally able to seek redress for the loss and hold the wrongdoer accountable. This is true no matter how big or powerful the defendant might be. The biggest companies are not immune from having individual citizens force them to account for consequences of their actions. You can be sure that those companies would pay little heed to individual complaints if the law were any different.

Therefore it is probably no surprise that those big interests are fronting many efforts to change the civil justice system to take away rights from everyday consumers. That was the message in a new article published in the State Journal-Register by Jerry Latherow, the President of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association. Attorney Latherow explains how the need to have accountability mechanisms is re-affirmed every day as “headlines are dominated with examples of corporations letting profits trump basic consumer protections: massive car recalls, food recalls, serious safety issues with prescription and over-the-counter drugs and financial institutions in trouble.”

Each Illinois brain injury lawyers at our firm appreciates that those trying to change the civil justice system often argue that fixing these issues should fall on federal regulatory agencies. However, that has zero effects on those actually hurt by the misconduct. Beyond that, history has revealed repeatedly that public regulatory agencies are woefully understaffed and underfunded. They simply cannot ensure that most major industries act appropriately all of the time.

That is why it falls on private citizens and the civil justice to ensure that the drive for profits by big corporations does not lead to undue harm to others. Unfortunately, because of the very nature of the business world, without outside checks, the entities often skew dangerously toward maximization of profits, even when it hurts consumers. When there is no accountability for the harm caused, then those industries will undoubtedly continue to act in whatever ways bring the most profits, with more and more innocent consumers hurt in the process.

The civil justice system acts at that check. Contrary to some misleading arguments made by those trying to pass tort reform laws, there is not an epidemic of lawsuits filed by private citizens against businesses. In reality the vast majority of suits are businesses suing one another. Far from the picture painted by some, lawsuits are not filed at random without merit. Instead, the system is simply a vital tool that helps those hurt and ensures other harms are prevented.

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A new verdict in a child brain injury lawsuit is making headlines both for the traumatic nature of the story and the large award reached by the jury. The Sacramento Bee recently published information on the end of the case. The lawsuit was filed by a family following a series of errors it claims led their son to suffer a life altering brain injury. The consequences will have severe effects on the child for the rest of his life.

The problems began in 2008, when the child’s mother went to the hospital because of problems during her pregnancy. She was not all the way at full-term, but was not so premature that the child wasn’t viable. The story explains that she was 36 weeks pregnant when she showed signs of “placental abruption.” This is the situation when the placenta—which provides nutrients to the child—leaves the uterine wall early. While a serious condition, in the vast majority of cases, this condition can be dealt with without severe harm to the child. However, time is of the essence in these cases.

The family in this case argues that the timely care was not provided. The main problem was that the doctor leading the effort used faulty equipment to reach incorrect conclusions about the child’s condition. In particular, our Illinois brain injury lawyers were shocked to read that the doctor did not detect a heartbeat when he performed an ultrasound on the child, and so he assumed that the child was dead. He even told the child’s mother that the baby was not alive.

However, when an ultrasound technician came into the hospital and checked the analysis, the technician determined that the reading was in error. Instead, the child was actually alive. However, because of the mistakes, the child had been struggling in the womb without attention for an hour and twenty minutes. When the mistake was uncovered an emergency C-section was performed. However, the delay had led to significant injuries. In particular, the child’s brain was injured. He now suffers from severe spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy.

At the trial following the incident, it was uncovered the machine which the doctor used to perform the ultrasound may have been faulty. Evidence was presented that the machine had not been serviced even a single time in the last decade. That was the case even though the machine’s manual explicitly stated that it needed annual maintenance. This negligence likely prevented the machine from working as intended in this case. The result was delayed care which had life-altering consequences for this boy.

Our Chicago brain injury lawyers have worked with many families whose children have developed brain injuries during birth that should have been prevented. Illinois cerebral palsy lawsuits are probably the most common suit of this nature, involving children who have brain development problems because of preventable conduct during their birth. These injuries are heart-breaking, and the families deserve full redress for the losses that their youngsters will face for the rest of their life as a result.

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News about football-related traumatic brain injuries has continued unabated over the past few days. The suicide death of former star Junio Seau made headlines as many have speculated that the incident was caused in part by a brain injury. Seau shot himself in the chest, and his family has said that they would donate his brain to science to understand whether he did have an injury.

Seau’s death is just the latest in a string of issues related to brain injuries in players and what the league was doing to keep players safe. Of course, the game includes some inherent risks. However, the legal issues related to the pending lawsuit against the NFL center on what the league could have done to warn players and limit risks. There has been much criticism about the ways that the league and certain teams have handled the issue.

Those criticisms were likely at play in the very harsh penalties recently doled out by the league against a team—the New Orleans Saints—for a “bounty program”. According to reports the team, including some coaches and players, had an internal program where cash rewards were given to players for knocking opponents out of the game with injuries. This program apparently was in place from 2009-2011. The head coach of the team has been suspended for a year, another coach has been suspended indefinitely, and several players have also faced severe penalties.

As a recent Chicago Tribune article explained, “the bounty scandal is a black eye for a league that has been focusing on player safety as they face lawsuits from hundreds of former players who suffered concussions.”

Of course, our Chicago brain injury lawyers, appreciate that having a program in place on a team specifically rewarding players for physically hurting other players goes beyond any reasonable bounds. There is no justification for seeking financial reward for serious injuries. That sort of conduct cannot be part of the game. Considering the information that is coming out about the long-term risks of all football injuries caused by traumatic hits, it is simply unacceptable for this sort of conduct to be tolerated at any level.

While most local residents will not play in the NFL themselves or even have loved ones one a professional team, many local families have young athletes on football fields every year, often in school-related sports activities. The same basic issues of safety and protection apply in those settings as they do at the professional level. Coaches, administrators, athlete trainers, and others involved in these situations have to take basic steps to keep student-athletes safe in games and practices. That includes recognizing potential injuries when they occur and ensuring proper treatment and rest are received. Failure in this regard could be a sign of negligence that leads to significant harm to the players involved.

If you or a loved one may have been injured because of the misconduct of others, it is crucial families involved learn about their legal options. Sometimes that is the only way to ensure the injured athlete will have access to the long-term care or treatment options necessary to fully recover.

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Brain injuries that affect children are particularly damaging, because they often dictate certain aspects of the rest of the child’s life. Like everyone else, babies and young children are capable of suffering a traumatic brain injury in car accidents, falls, and similar incidents. In addition, newborns also face brain injuries as a result of problems during their mother’s pregnancy and delivery.

When injuries arise during labor it can sometimes be caused by mistakes made by medical professionals. In many other cases the brain injury develops well before the delivery, while the child is growing inside the mother’s womb. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the harm was not preventable. That is because we now know a great deal about how certain actions and exposures for a mother during pregnancy affect the child’s development. Each Chicago brain injury lawyer at our firm knows that as information about risks of conduct and exposure is uncovered, those in a position to lessen the harm should take reasonable steps to do so.

For example, last week Business Week wrote about a new study that seemed to conclusively show that exposure to a pesticide chemical known as chlorpyrifos led to developmental brain injuries in children in utero. The research was published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The research effort involved taking MRI scans of children whose mothers had been exposed to increased levels of the chemical. What the researchers found was that the children who had been exposed were more likely to have certain brain abnormalities when compared with children whose mothers were not exposed. The brain abnormalities were found in various parts of the children’s brain, including areas related to language, attention, emotions, and reward systems.

The researchers are not yet sure if certain treatments can be provided to help those children who were over-exposed. However, considered some of the issues are structural changes in the brain, reversing any of the abnormalities is unlikely. In any event, the Illinois brain injury lawyers at our firm appreciate that this sort of research is yet another reminder of the need to be aware of these types of exposures and their related risks.

The particular chemical at issue is used in a Dow Chemcial Company pesticide known as Dursban. The pesticide has not been allowed in residential areas for ten years. However, it is still in use in certain rural, agricultural areas. Mothers living in those locations may still be affected by the exposure. That being the case, mothers who suspect that this might be an issue should take steps to ensure that their exposure is limited as much as possible during the pregnancy.

For their part, a representative from Dow admitted that the study breaks new ground. However, they dispute that any conclusively findings can be taken from the research. They suggest that testing on animals exposed to far higher levels of the chemical showed no adverse affects, and so the consequences for the children might be connected to some outside, unknown variable.

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NC Times profiled a medical researcher—and former soldier—who is calling for stepped up efforts to develop real treatments that might help soldiers who experience brain injuries on the battlefield. The researcher, Kevin “Kit” Parker, was in charge of a group at Harvard that recently published new information about how certain battlefield blasts can lead to traumatic brain injuries. The new information was warmly welcomed by many in the scientific community. However, the wide coverage notwithstanding, the researcher has been disappointed that the findings have not been more vigorously used by those in a position to turn the information into treatments.

Specifically, the professor noted that no drug companies have been interested in taking the research to create new battlefield treatments. As our Chicago brain injury lawyers have often covered on this blog, blasts in Iraq and Afghanistan have affected tens of thousands of soldiers. Brain injuries are known as the “trademark” injury for both wars. The U.S. Department of Defense has stated that over 220,000 soldiers have experienced traumatic brain injuries since the two wars began over a decade ago. These injuries are particularly insidious because they are hard to detect and many victims may never fully understand the consequences of the injury. That is because they cannot be seen from the outside. The soldiers who suffer a TBI often have a perfectly intact body.

Considering the scope and severity of the problem, coming up with better diagnostic, treatment, and prevention measures is crucial.

The researcher profiled in this story wanted to learn more about exactly how the injuries were sustained. To do so his team built a simulator that can deliver an exact amount of force into the nerve cells of test rats. The impact was observed microscopically. In this way, the experiment allowed researchers to actually watch the shock wave travel through the brain cells and cause damage. They saw how the force led to swelling and other damage to certain parts of the cell—like the dendrites and axons. These are structures involved in communication between cells in the brain.

The study allowed researchers to identify that the damaging wave seemed to travel along structures known as “integrins.” These are protein strings which act as a pathway in certain cells.

However, even more encouragingly, researchers found that administration of a drug called Rho-kinase after the blast was particularly helpful in reducing the overall amount of injury sustained. Down the road this information could have very real effects on battlefield first aid. Providing this immediate drug after a bomb blast, for example, might prevent widespread brain cell damage that might one day manifest in any number of brain problems—like Alzheimer’s.

Our Chicago brain injury lawyers appreciate the scope of the findings and the possibility to save much suffering. However, more needs to fall in place for that to actually work. For one thing, the doctor hasn’t had much luck getting drug companies interested in the product. He suggest that more information about traumatic brain injuries generally must be uncovered before the companies will likely invest the resources and time necessary to make the treatment possible.

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