Top Five Car Accident Catastrophic Injuries in South Carolina
Every year, car accidents kill or seriously injure millions of Americans. Many of these serious injuries are catastrophic (life-threatening). Such injuries typically mean extended hospital stays, multiple surgical procedures, and extended physical therapy. The medical bills add up quickly in these situations, and the pain and suffering is almost unbearable, for victims as well as their friends and family.
Compensation is available for these injuries. This compensation usually includes money for economic losses, such as medical bills, and noneconomic losses, such as pain and suffering. Although this compensation is available, insurance companies don’t give it away like candy on Halloween. Instead, a Columbia catastrophic injury lawyer must diligently collect evidence, build a solid legal claim, and fight for this compensation in court.
Head Injuries
Concussions (mTBIs, or mild traumatic brain injuries), serious brain injuries, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder are the most common crash-related brain injuries.
Medically, concussions usually aren’t catastrophic. But they are catastrophic in other ways. Common symptoms include disorientation, headaches, and other effects that make it difficult or impossible to function at work, home, school, or anywhere else. The professional and personal losses that a concussion inflicts are often catastrophic indeed.
As for serious brain injuries, during crashes, victims’ heads slam violently and repeatedly against the insides of their skulls. This motion causes brain bleeding and swelling, effects which usually cause permanent injuries. Dead brain cells don’t regenerate.
Vehicle collisions are the most common non-combat cause of PTSD. Extreme stress, like the stress of a car crash, alters brain chemistry, causing symptoms like hypervigilance and anger. Once again, people who struggle with these effects usually cannot function, unless they’re taking powerful drugs that have powerful side effects.
Serious Burns
Semi-truck crashes often cause these injuries. Diesel and gasoline burn at different temperatures. Furthermore, the extreme force of these wrecks often pins victims under wrecked and burning semi-trucks until emergency responders can extinguish the flames and cut them out of their vehicles.
These injuries normally require extensive, and expensive, treatment at regional burn centers. This treatment usually includes skin grafts. Because of this extensive treatment, victims usually remain in hospitals for at least a month. Then, it’s several more months before they can have anything resembling a normal life.
Broken Pelvis
A broken pelvis is one of the few broken bone injuries that’s usually life threatening. The break usually damages the organs, including reproductive organs, that the pelvis protects. These organs don’t have protective skin layers. Therefore, slight abrasions bleed profusely.
Spine Injuries
The extreme force of a car crash usually knocks the spine out of alignment. These misalignment injuries often cause permanent paralysis.
Additionally, the force of a wreck often breaks vertebrae, the tiny bones in the spine. Even a hairline crack could cause a herniated disc, pinched nerve, or other injury that’s extremely painful and almost untreatable.
Infections
All these wounds have high infection rates. Bacterial infection could set in before a surgical procedure, during that procedure, or after it. Usually, a COlumbia personal injury lawyer must file a separate legal claim to obtain compensation for infection-related injuries.
Count on a Detail-Oriented Richland County Lawyer
Injury victims are entitled to significant compensation. For a free consultation with an experienced personal injury lawyer in Columbia, contact the Marc Brown Law Firm. Virtual, home, and hospital visits are available.
