Fatal Differences Between Open and Closed Head Injuries
You and your wife have been waiting in the emergency room at Christus. Although you would like nothing more than to just go home and sleep off your headache, your wife insisted that you needed to get checked out. Her brother was recently diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury (TBI), after falling off of his roof, and she doesn’t want you to take any risks.
You try to explain to her that the fall wasn’t that bad, and it’s not like your head was cracked or bleeding like her brother’s head had been. Unfortunately, she wasn’t convinced. She claimed that there could still be internal damage and you weren’t leaving until you were checked out.
Is she being paranoid, or should you really be worried that a simple bump on the head could cause a brain injury?
Traumatic Brain Injury Differences Between Open and Closed Head Damage
Although all types of head injuries are capable of causing brain damage, some are worse than others. There are two types of traumatic brain injuries, open head and closed head, which both present different but equally terrifying—and potentially fatal—outcomes.
Closed head injuries are injuries that affect only the brain, without damaging the skull. These include concussions and intracranial bleeding. They are also the cause of:
- Seventy-five percent of all TBI brain damage and physical, psychological, and cognitive impairment.
- The most infant and children fatalities over any other cause.
- Nearly 90 percent of traumatic brain injury-related emergency room visits.
- Thousands of misdiagnoses each year, due to the lack of external wounds.
Open head injuries include skull fractures and penetrations directly into the brain. They result in:
- Ninety-one percent of firearm-related deaths.
- The most amount of brain infections and need for brain surgeries.
- A 96 percent mortality rate.
Closed head injuries are the most common TBIs, and are therefore, considered to be the worst type. However, open head injuries, although less frequent, have the highest mortality rates.
Over the past decade, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been collecting data concerning traumatic brain injuries in the United States. Unfortunately, that data has shown an alarming rate of increase for TBI accidents, emergency room visits, and deaths over the past 10 years. Since 2005, the rate of suffering a debilitating or fatal TBI has almost doubled—and is still increasing. This is why it is extremely important to seek medical attention immediately after a head injury. Your brain is too precious to ignore—take care and protect it from both open and closed head injuries, otherwise you may wind up as another CDC data point in a long line of TBI fatalities.
TBI treatments and recovery can not only be long and arduous, but extremely expensive. Contact us today for a free consultation about whether you're entitled to damages and compensation for your brain injury. We can help you get the money you need for your treatment, as well as the justice you and your family deserve. Call today!
Help us spread the word about TBI awareness and risk by sharing this page on Facebook or recommending it on Google Plus. You never know who else may need to know about the dangers of an untreated head wound. Click the media icons above to share now. Someone will be glad that you did.