Brain Injury Claims

A brain injury can be a very serious complication of medical malpractice and can result in an individual having their life, and possibly the lives of those close to them, profoundly affected. 

Brain injuries can be caused by both traumatic and non-traumatic causes.  The former are more common in the personal injury claim context, whereas the latter are more common in the clinical negligence claims context.  There are a huge number of non-traumatic causes of brain injury, including:

• Vascular causes, such as a stroke caused by a cerebral infarction (a clot in an artery in the brain), a cerebral haemorrhage (a bleed in the brain), a subarachnoid haemorrhage (a bleed, usually caused by a burst aneurysm)
• Epilepsy, including status epilepticus
• Brain tumours (cancers)
• Metabolic causes, such as hypoxia (a lack of oxygen), drugs, alcohol, hypoglycaemia (low blood sugar), hyperpyrexia (excessive temperature)
• Infective causes, such as meningitis, tuberculosis, cerebral abscesses, tropical infections including malaria, encephalitis
• Raised intracranial pressure (RICP)

There are many possible reasons why you might consider the possibility of a brain injury being caused by clinical negligence, including:

• A delay in diagnosis and treatment, or inadequate or inappropriate treatment, of the underlying cause
• Inadequate or inappropriate treatment of an underlying condition that results in damage to the brain caused by low oxygen, low glucose, an infection, etc.

A brain injury can manifest in many different ways, from very subtle cognitive effects, such as memory loss, to very profound physical and cognitive difficulties, such as a minimally conscious state (MCS) or persistent vegetative state (PVS). 

The effects of a brain injury are very dependent upon the underlying cause of the injury and the resulting damages that occurs and what parts of the brain are damaged.  For example:

• A typical cerebral infarction with a blockage to the middle cerebral artery in the brain will cause damage to one half of the brain with resultant damage to the other half of the body, typically resulting in weakness in movement (hemiplegia) and a loss of sensation in that side, due to damage to the motor and sensory pathways in the brain.
• A lack of oxygen to the brain can result in very subtle, but profoundly disabling, memory loss if the severity and duration of the hypoxia is relatively mild and short; or it may result in the most severe form of neurological injury, persistent vegetative state, if the hypoxia is extreme (for example, following a delay in resuscitation following a cardiorespiratory arrest).
• The delay in diagnosis and treatment of raised intracranial pressure (hydrocephalus) can result in a complex mix of brain injury, including partial sightedness (due to damage to the visual pathways), personality and behaviour changes (due to damage to the frontal lobes), and memory loss.

In clinical negligence cases involving neurological injuries, one of the difficulties can also be identifying what difference appropriate treatment would have made if there was already an underlying neurological problem, such as hydrocephalus.

The study of conditions affecting the brain, their diagnosis and treatment are the disciplines of neurology (non-surgical treatment) and neurosurgery (surgical treatment).

If you believe you may have a medical negligence claim, please contact the team by email at clinnegenquiries@kingsleynapley.co.uk or by calling +44 (0)20 7814 1200.