Child brain injuries may require lifetime recovery

Personal injury lawsuits help Dallas victims and families recover compensation for injuries caused by negligence. What if a victim suffers brain trauma, a life-altering injury that requires a lifetime of treatment? Any settlement or jury award in a brain injury case would have to be substantial to take the victim’s extensive needs for the future into consideration.

Medical specialists now believe that children who suffer catastrophic brain injuries may need care far beyond a rehabilitation stage and perhaps throughout their lives. The experts’ viewpoints were published in a special edition of the journal NeuroRehabilitation.

The doctors’ group, led by pediatric brain injury experts, agreed that recovery programs adaptable to the victim’s home, school and social environments were essential. Young brain trauma victims may need integrated post-rehabilitation treatment to succeed in reintegration to social worlds larger than medical programs can provide.

The doctors are encouraging more family-centered programs to help brain-injured children adapt to their conditions. One study discovered that child brain-trauma victims often had confidence and self-worth issues and suggested rehabilitation techniques to improve self-esteem.

A U.K. program that promotes education as rehabilitation uses adult vocational programs as guidelines to create school learning programs for children with brain injuries. Another suggested learning program encourages self-knowledge among brain-injured preadolescents to develop social skills.

Neuroscientists know more about the brain injury recovery process than they ever have, based on relatively new information that the brain is not as static and unforgiving to injuries as once believed. Neural plasticity, the ability of the brain to change even beyond childhood, gives doctors and children hope that lifelong recovery programs will have significant, cumulative and positive effects.

As new and successful programs are tested and reviewed for brain-injured children, parents must be concerned with the ability to afford them. When a negligent act causes a child’s brain trauma, parents can take legal action to ensure that their child receives the necessary medical care, rehabilitation and long-term recovery programs.

Source: scienceblog.com, “Recovery From Pediatric Brain Injury A Lifelong Process,” July 9, 2012