Long Island Brain Injury Lawyer

The medical malpractice lawyers at Duffy & Duffy have handled many cases when a medical professional and their medical negligence has caused brain injuries. These injuries include brain trauma, a lack of oxygen, cognitive impairment, or a brain injury caused from an insufficient amount of cerebral blood flow carrying blood to the brain. If you suspect that you or a loved one has suffered a brain injury because your health care provider did not use the appropriate care, we can meet with you to learn about the details of your situation. In the event that you have a claim, a Long Island brain injury lawyer can assert your right to compensation with the dedication you deserve.

Protect Your Rights Against a Health Care Provider After a Traumatic Brain Injury

To succeed in brain injury medical malpractice cases and claims, a patient and their Long Island attorney must show that a doctor or other health care provider failed to offer treatment at an appropriate level. The professional standard of care, which is specific to this context, requires a physician to act with at least as much diligence as would be shown by a similarly trained and situated doctor. Since this standard is difficult for a jury to understand, expert witnesses are needed to help explain where the line should be drawn. They also will be useful in identifying the careless actions that caused the harm and guiding the jury in its analysis of whether those met the standard of care for that specific situation.

Once the patient has shown that the defendant doctor has breached the duty of care, a medical malpractice claim requires drawing a direct causal link from that breach to the injuries. A case will not succeed if the plaintiff would have been in the same position had the doctor not failed to meet the appropriate standard. However, if the patient does establish the causation element and identifies damages that resulted from the breach, he or she may be eligible to receive a wide range of compensation. This can include medical expenses, lost income, pain and suffering, scarring and disfigurement, and any other losses that stemmed from the doctor’s negligence.

What is a Traumatic Brain Injury?

A traumatic brain injury (TBI) occurs when brain tissue is damaged by a sudden traumatic event, such as hitting an object. The resulting symptoms can range from mild to severe. Mild TBI can result in a brief loss of consciousness, headaches, confusion, dizziness, blurred vision, ringing in the ears, a bad taste in the mouth, a change in behavior or mood, fatigue, lethargy, altered sleep, or memory troubles. Severe TBI may involve the same symptoms, but it can also entail others that are more dramatic.

Brain cells require oxygen to function and may start to die if they cannot receive it. Hypoxic-anoxic injuries (HAI) happen when there is a substantial (hypoxic) or total (anoxic) lack of oxygen supplied to the brain. When caused by a professional health care provider, HAI can be the result of anesthesia errors, delaying proper intubation, delay in performing a C-section of a baby whose oxygen supply has been impaired, or poor nursing that results in a delay in realizing and fixing oxygen deprivation.

Ischemic and hypoxic-ischemic injuries (HII) happen when there is not enough cerebral blood flow to carry blood to the brain. These situations are often the result of malpractice during childbirth, such as an interruption of blood or oxygen to the placenta. However, adults may experience these injuries as the result of a misdiagnosed heart attack or stroke. An injury may be localized, as it is in ischemic strokes, or generalized, as it is in a circulatory collapse secondary to cardiac arrhythmias or cardiac arrest. Certain areas of the brain are particularly sensitive to a lack of oxygen.

Brain injury attorneys in Long Island at Duffy & Duffy understand that medical mistakes and negligence can occur in a variety of circumstances and lead to grave injuries. Common cases seen by our brain injury attorneys include:

Cerebral Palsy

Labor and delivery is known to be an unpredictable and difficult process, hence the physician in charge of delivering the baby needs to monitor the mother and unborn child and check for any signs of fetal distress. Failure to notice important problems, such as the umbilical cord’s pressure on the baby’s neck, may lead to a lack of oxygen to the brain, which can cause Cerebral Palsy. Since there is presently no cure for Cerebral Palsy, victims and their families face lifelong suffering and expenses due to the doctor’s mistake. A brain injury attorney in our firm, who specializes in Cerebral Palsy cases, will be happy to discuss your child’s case with you, and advise you about the possibility of recovery and damages that can result from it.

Cerebral Hypoxia

Another example of birth injury is cerebral hypoxia, which may also occur due to obstetrician’s failure to monitor the fetus during birth. Decreased heart rate, improper use of forceps and umbilical cord pressure are all things that should alert the doctor to act quickly in response to distress. Failure to perform a timely C-section, to restore the oxygen flow to the brain, may lead to significant brain damage caused by hypoxia. Our brain injury attorneys working with medical experts will review all the records surrounding your child’s birth and advise you as to whether the case may be meritorious in court.

Failure to Diagnose a Disease

Our brain injury attorneys also represent patients who were injured as the result of physician’s or emergency room staff’s failure to diagnose a condition, leading to brain injury. Examples of such cases can be a failure to diagnose meningitis, especially in children where an infection, if not caught in time, can lead to hydrocephalus, as well as significant pressure on the brain causing severe injury. If the child has symptoms consistent with meningitis, such as fever, lethargy or significant weight loss, performing lumbar puncture, together with blood work, is essential to proper diagnosis and timely treatment. Failure to do so may cause the treating provider to be named a defendant in a brain injury lawsuit.