Fairfax Anoxic Brain Injury Lawyer
An anoxic brain injury is a broad term referring to any time there is a lack of oxygen to the brain. Common names or other names for a anoxic brain injury are cerebral hypoxia or hypoxic anoxic injury, also known as an HIA. If you or a loved one has suffered an anoxic brain injury due to the actions of another, a Fairfax brain injury lawyer can help get you the compensation you’re entitled to.
These are serious life-threatening injuries that can occur in a variety of different circumstances. They often lead to serious mental and cognitive injuries, disabilities and physical and permanent injuries in some cases.
There are a wide variety of ways someone can suffer from an anoxic brain injury and there are a wide variety of treatments available and it’s one of the most difficult injuries to understand and to treat.
Fairfax Anoxic Brain Injury Advice
In these cases, a Fairfax anoxic brain injury lawyer is often dealing with families of the victim and it is important to make sure they gather as much information as possible in the shortest time as possible because every second counts. There’s a common public advertisement for strokes that says, “Time loss is brain loss,” and that’s really true in anoxic brain injuries as well and the more time someone is deprived of oxygen to their brain, the longer the period that their brain is injured, therefore, the more serious and significant the injury.
There are a variety of different anoxic brain injuries and they certainly may result in cell death, permanent damage, sometimes, not permanent damage and sometimes, it’s coma, reflexive injuries, seizures, or grand mal seizures.
Common Causes of Anoxic Brain Injuries
There are a variety of common causes of cerebral hypoxia or anoxic brain injuries. Sometimes, it’s a traumatic event, which is a choke, strangulation, drug overdose or being involved in another type of traumatic event like drowning or a near-drowning experience, smoke inhalation in a fire, something like that. It may be in a fight and somebody is struck in the throat area or a car accident to which your trachea is damaged and you are unable to breathe and get enough oxygen to your brain.
There are also some more common medically related issues in which we find anoxia and that’s most likely mini strokes, also known as TIAs, and silent strokes, which are more significant than TIAs and typically occur in older people and a stroke where there’s no outward effects in which the brain is suffering a lot of damage.
Unfortunately, there’s also a rising link between anoxic brain injuries in young people and that’s when people are involved in holding their breath either underwater or in the so-called “fainting game,” where people are inducing some of the reactions of anoxia in the body that actually occurs including fainting, which is your body’s way of showing that you’re not able to get enough oxygen, and therefore, your body shuts down.
Unfortunately, people can actually cause anoxic brain injuries themselves even when they don’t intend to.
Determining Liability
Liability is often a very difficult thing to prove in an anoxic brain injury case. When it’s a traumatic event and it’s an intentional event, that makes it a little easier for an anoxic brain injury attorney in Fairfax to prove liability in an anoxic brain injury case.
Perhaps the injury has occurred while under anesthesia while at a hospital and these cases are quite difficult to prove and certainly, we want to investigate what the standard of care is or the amount of anesthesia, the type of oxygen monitoring, and the type of airway monitoring that occurred whether or not that met accepted standards.
What Needs to be Proven in Court
A Fairfax anoxic brain injury attorney will need to prove that the injury suffered was directly related to the negligence of the person at fault. For example, we’ll need to prove that there was causation between action by the defendant that as a result of that action that an injury occurred and as a result of that injury, there was an anoxic brain injury and the damage is claimed occurred.
For example, during a medical procedure, it would be the injured party’s duty to show that the nurse or that the doctor over-prescribed medicine and that medicine led to a rapid drop in the oxygen that was going to the brain and therefore, that was an anoxic brain injury.
