We don’t often think we can sustain a brain injury. After all, isn’t that for more serious situations than the average person is in?
Yes, and no.
Just like you can twist an ankle walking down the street, cut your finger making a salad or get a bloody nose for walking into a door, brain injury is a wound that can happen to anyone, often in the blink of an eye.
The brain is just like any other organ of the body, although perhaps best protected by its skull encasing. Other organs are insulated by fat and skin, perhaps the rib cage or adjacent organs. The brain is lucky enough to be surrounded by a helmet of bone, but even that protection is not perfect.
Traumatic brain injury occurs when someone receives a violent blow or jolt to the head or body. It can happen when an object cracks the skull and touches the brain.
There is such a thing as mild brain injury as well – that happens when a teenage volleyball player sustains a concussion after being hit on the head with the ball during a game. Symptoms can be mild to severe in any of these cases, lasting a short time to never-ending.
It’s usually a good idea to have a doctor take a look if you’ve been hit on the head or body-slammed unexpectedly. Just to be sure nothing serious has happened internally.
Brain injuries happen when you fall, get in a car accident, fist-fight with a kid at school, are the object of abuse. They also happen during sports, whether recreational or competitive, and they can occur during combat or when explosive blasts happen nearby.
Suffice it to say the likelihood of a brain injury for the average person is not super-high. That said, according to the Centers for Disease Control, Americans present brain injury in 1.365 million emergency department visits every year, requiring 275,000 hospitalizations and resulting in 52,000 deaths. An estimated 1.7 million Americans sustain a brain injury every year, caused most often by falls, with car accidents as the next most common reason.
Don’t mess around if you or someone you love has a brain injury. Check it out with a qualified medical practitioner. They will let you know if an MRI can help diagnose or better determine treatment. We’re here if you need us.
