Each year over 145,000 individuals across the country are unintentionally injured, making accidental injuries the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. Worse yet, many of these catastrophic injuries are entirely preventable and often the result of gross negligence on behalf of the offending party.
Whether you’ve suffered a minor or life-changing unintentional injury at the hands of another individual, you deserve to cover your health care costs and costs associated with emotional distress. Yet time and time again we see victims struggle to receive the care and support they deserve in these trying times. At Green Law Firm, P.C. we are committed to helping our clients get the care they need. We are experts at making sure that the insurance companies and offending parties are held liable for your specific situation.
While we wish that no one would ever have to suffer a catastrophic injuries in their lifetime, our firm does everything in its power to give you the emotional and financial resources to recover as best you can. No one should incur a lifetime of debt as the result of someone else’s negligence.
Let’s take a quick look at what a catastrophic injury entails and how to ensure you are taken care of in the unfortunate event you are faced with this difficult life matter.
Catastrophic Injuries
Put simply, a catastrophic injury is one that goes beyond a minor scrape or bruise and severely impacts the quality of your life either physically or mentally, and often times both. A catastrophic injury is virtually always life changing and is generally determined by answering the following questions.
- Does the injury cause permanent disability?
- Has the injury resulted in a shortened life expectancy?
- Has the injury caused long-term or irreversible conditions that must be monitored medically and indefinitely?
If the answer is yes to any of the above, it is likely considered to be a catastrophic injury.
In addition, many catastrophic injuries can have a severe impact on not only the victim’s quality of life but the finances and well-being of immediate family and friends as well. Due to the severe nature of catastrophic injuries, victims often require numerous intensive surgeries, extended hospital stays, indefinite rehabilitative care, and even full-time assistance from trained medical professionals. As you can imagine, costs for this type of injury add up quickly and cannot usually be paid for out of pocket by most families.
Not only do catastrophic injuries incur immediate medical costs, but the injuries can also often severely limit future financial income and can cause the loss of a job in many instances. When facing a catastrophic injury, you should always hire a personal injury attorney to help ensure you are compensated fairly.
Your catastrophic injury might include a brain injury as the result of a car accident, or you may be injured on the job at no fault of your own. There are many types of catastrophic injuries, each of which presents a unique set of incredibly difficult challenges.
Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
An injury to the brain is one of the most common types of catastrophic injuries, and as you can imagine, it affects virtually every area of the victim’s life. These types of accidents are common in car accidents, or even when falling or being struck by a physical object at work, car accidents. TBIs can also be caused by a variety of contact sports, such as football or mixed martial arts fighting.
TBIs can have a severe effect on the victim’s mood, sleep, and overall health, which can deteriorate quickly if not given the proper medical care. Loss of memory and motivation or depression are also incredibly common in traumatic brain injuries.
Spinal Cord Injury
Damage to one’s spinal cord is also a common cause of catastrophic injuries and again presents unique challenges for the victims. Given that your spinal cord plays such an essential role in your overall health and well-being, an injury can drastically affect your ability to function on a day to day basis physically.
An injury to the spinal cord disrupts how your brain and body communicate. Unfortunately, this often results in many health ailments that cannot be fixed without extensive surgery, rehab, and medication with severe side effects. In addition to affecting the victim physically, spinal cord injuries can often result in extreme depression, PTSD, and many forms of anxiety. As such, many spinal cord injury victims struggle to live a normal life post-injury even with the best care available.
A little less than 300,000 people in the United States struggle with a spinal cord injury of some sort, which has significant repercussions for the victim’s finances, health, relationships and overall well-being. Common causes of spinal injuries include physical violence, a sports-related accident, or the result of a severe fall.
Burn Injury
Another common catastrophic injury is the result of severe burns either through fire or car accident. Not only are these types of injuries extremely painful, they often result in severe and permanent changes to the victim’s overall appearance, which can cause a whole host of adverse side effects as well. While treatment continues to be more effective and affordable, long-term treatment for severe burns is exceptionally costly and often cannot completely reverse the tissue damage. According to recent statistics, there were over 486,000 people who received medical treatment for burns in 2016.
Many burn victims report feelings of immense depression and struggle to carry on a healthy and normal social life moving forward. Severe burns can be caused by construction accidents, unsafe buildings, defective products, or other work-related accidents. Given the pain, emotional distress, and potential loss of income, burn injuries are extremely serious.
