It happens every 15 seconds in the United States – someone suffers a concussion, a traumatic brain injury whose symptoms can range from mild head pain to severe damage and even death.
Hospital emergency rooms treat roughly one million people each year for concussion, while many more are treated privately or not at all. An estimated 50,000 to 80,000 annually suffer permanent disability as the result of concussion.
While some of the most highly publicized cases involve football injuries, many concussions also occur in auto accidents or in the workplace. And in many cases, negligence is involved, whether inadequate precautions and health care by schools and sports teams, defective products, unsafe working conditions or hazardous premises that cause a slip and fall injury.
If you or a loved suffered a severe concussion that caused permanent injury, you may want to contact a personal injury lawyer experienced with concussion cases. Kline & Specter, PC has more than 40 attorneys, five of whom are also doctors, who have the knowledge and ability to litigate concussion injury cases. We represent clients with brain injury lawsuits in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and nationwide.
The frequency of concussion injuries and their wide-ranging consequences are only recently coming to light. For instance, recent reports linked head injuries with Alzheimer’s disease, a theory borne out in analyses of World War II veterans. More and more cases have been recorded of football players and boxers having memory disorders later in life.
More information also has come out about victims of concussion having a greater risk of a subsequent injury. Football players sent into a game before a concussion has fully resolved often suffer Second Impact Syndrome, or SIS. One such case, handled by Kline & Specter, recently brought a $7.5 million settlement paid by La Salle University to a former football player who suffered severe brain damage. (See The Plevretes Case).
Some 300,000 athletes are believed to suffer concussions each year, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and The Sports Concussion Institute estimates that 10 percent of athletes in contact sports suffer a concussion each season.
Younger athletes have been shown to be more prone to concussions. Males suffer more concussions than females, except for athletes 10 and younger. A study of hospital patients showed young girls are four times more likely to die from head injuries than boys. This high rate has prompted some researchers to call for a ban on young girls heading soccer balls.
Symptoms of concussion include worsening headaches, seizures, dizziness, drowsiness, slurred speech, weakness or numbness of the limbs, behavioral changes, irritability, neck pain, double or fuzzy vision, nausea and vomiting, among others.
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