Our DC injury lawyers are familiar with the devastation that suffering from a traumatic brain injury can wreak on the lives of victims and their families. Now, here is more disturbing news about some of the serious side effects that can come with a Washington DC TBI.
University of California-San Francisco scientists, who studied nearly 300,000 older war veterans (age 55 and older), found the having a brain injury can more than double a person’s risk of developing dementia. According to lead researcher and San Francisco VA Medical’s Center Memory Disorders Program’s director Kristine Yaffe, veterans with a TBI diagnosis had a 15% chance of developing dementia, while the risk for those who never had a TBI was 7%.
Obviously, you don’t have to go to war to develop a traumatic brain injury. Fall accidents and car crashes are two of the most common causes of TBIs. In many instances, these types of accidents occur because someone else was negligent, which is where an experienced Washington DC traumatic brain injury law firm can step in to help you.
Unfortunately, a TBI doesn’t just up someone’s dementia risk, but Taiwanese researchers report that having a TBI can increase the patient’s chances of developing a stroke by up to 10-fold. It doesn’t help that complications from a TBI, such as cardiac injuries, ruptured arteries, and blood clotting disturbances, can also increase the chances of stroke.
The researchers compared data between 69,597 patients without TBIs and 23,199 patients with TBIs. They found that within the first three months, TBI patients had a 2.91% risk of stroke while the risk for those who didn’t have a brain injury was .3%. That’s a 10-fold difference. However, with time, the risk of stroke for the TBI patient did go down. Although his/her risk of stroke was 4.6 times more one year after the injury, after five years it had gone down to 2.3 times more than for patients who never had a TBI.
A fractured skull, however, did up the chance of stroke by 20 times for patients with brain injuries compares to those without this type of fracture. The chances of brain bleed, high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, diabetes, heart failure, and atrial fibrillation was also greater for TBI patients. This study can be found in Stroke’s July 28 online edition.
Proving that you have a brain injury and that it occurred in an accident caused by another party’s negligence can be incredibly challenging, which is why you want to make sure you are represented by experienced DC traumatic brain injury lawyers.
Stroke Risk Spikes After Brain Injury, The State Column, July 31, 2011
Traumatic brain injury doubles risk of later dementia, USA Today, July 18, 2011
Related Web Resources:
Traumatic Brain Injury, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Dementia, Medicine.net
National Stroke Association
More Blog Posts:
Many Brain Injury Patients Suffer from Pseudobulbar Affect, Says Survey, Washington DC Injury Lawyer Blog, January 6, 2011
Maryland TBI: Call a Concussion a Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, Says Researchers, Maryland Accident Law Blog, January 23, 2010
Natasha Richardson Did Not Receive Medical Attention Until Four Hours After Ski Fall Accident that Resulted in Fatal Traumatic Brain Injury, Maryland Accident Law Blog, March 20, 2009
Contact our Washington DC personal injury law firm today.