Brain injuries are classified as mild, moderate, or severe based on the level of damage sustained at the time of impact. Damage involves consciousness, memory loss, and neurological. Understanding the type and severity of your brain injury is essential in a personal injury claim because it directly determines the medical treatment required and the long-term compensation you may be entitled to pursue.
A brain injury can alter the way you think, speak, work, and connect with the people around you in ways that are not always visible to others. Concussions misdiagnosed as minor incidents, moderate injuries causing weeks of unconsciousness, and severe traumatic brain injuries resulting in permanent cognitive impairment all carry consequences that extend far beyond the initial emergency room visit. Medical bills accumulate quickly, and the costs of long-term rehabilitation, lost earning capacity, and ongoing care can place an enormous financial burden on your entire family.
Insurance companies routinely undervalue brain injury claims by disputing the severity of the diagnosis or arguing that symptoms preexisted the accident. Mild traumatic brain injuries are especially vulnerable to this tactic because their effects are not always visible on standard imaging tests. Without proper medical documentation and experienced legal representation, victims frequently settle for far less than their condition actually warrants.
In this article, you will discover the different types of brain injuries and how severity is classified, how each level of injury affects your personal injury claim, and how a brain injury attorney can help you pursue the full and fair compensation your recovery demands.
What Is a Traumatic Brain Injury?
A traumatic brain injury is damage to your brain caused by an outside force hitting or shaking your head. This means your brain gets hurt when something strikes your skull or when your head moves violently back and forth. The injury changes how your brain works and can affect your thinking, movement, and emotions.
Brain injuries happen in several common ways:
- Car accidents: The most frequent cause for adults in Nevada, especially when your head hits something or whips around, often leading to Nevada car accident injury claims.
- Falls: The leading cause for children under 4 and adults over 65, often from stairs or ladders.
- Sports injuries: Contact sports like football or accidents during recreational activities.
- Violence: Assaults, gunshot wounds, or domestic violence incidents.
How Doctors Measure Brain Injury Severity
Doctors use a test called the Glasgow Coma Scale to measure how serious your brain injury is. This test checks three things: whether you can open your eyes, if you can speak, and how well you can move. The scale goes from 3 to 15 points, with higher numbers meaning less severe injuries.
The three main levels are:
- Mild brain injury: You score 13 to 15 points and might lose consciousness briefly or not at all.
- Moderate brain injury: You score 9 to 12 points and stay unconscious for 30 minutes to 24 hours.
- Severe brain injury: You score 3 to 8 points and remain unconscious for more than 24 hours.
The word “mild” only describes your initial symptoms, not how the injury affects your daily life. Insurance companies often use this term to make your injury sound less serious than it really is, which can significantly impact car accident settlement agreements in Nevada.
Mild Traumatic Brain Injury
A mild traumatic brain injury, which includes concussions, typically involves brief or no loss of consciousness and milder initial symptoms. You might think “mild” means your symptoms are not serious, but that is not true. Many people with mild brain injuries never lose consciousness but still have major problems with work, relationships, and daily activities that may require filing a traumatic brain injury lawsuit in Nevada.
What Symptoms You Might Experience
Your symptoms might not show up right away but can develop over the first few days after your injury.
- Headaches: These can last for weeks or months and might get worse with activity
- Memory problems: You forget recent conversations, appointments, or where you put things
- Trouble concentrating: You cannot focus on work tasks or follow conversations
- Mood changes: You feel more irritated, sad, or anxious than normal
- Sleep problems: You cannot fall asleep or you feel tired all the time
- Vision or hearing changes: Your vision gets blurry, you hear ringing, or food tastes different
Why Your Scans Might Look Normal
You might feel frustrated when your CT scan or MRI looks normal even though you feel terrible. This happens because mild brain injuries often cause changes too small for these tests to see.
A CT scan uses X-rays to take pictures of your brain and can quickly show bleeding or broken bones. An MRI uses magnets to create more detailed images and might catch subtle changes a CT scan misses. But many mild brain injuries cause chemical changes in your brain cells that neither test can detect.
Your doctor diagnoses your injury based on your symptoms and what happened to you, not just on scan results.
How Treatment and Recovery Work
Treatment for mild brain injury starts with rest for both your body and brain. This means avoiding activities that make your symptoms worse and gradually returning to normal activities as you feel better.
Many people recover within a few months, while some experience symptoms that can last a year or longer. When symptoms persist this long, doctors call it post-concussion syndrome. This condition often needs special treatment from doctors who understand brain injuries.
Moderate Traumatic Brain Injury
A moderate traumatic brain injury means you were unconscious longer and your brain scans show clear damage. These injuries usually require you to stay in the hospital and work with rehabilitation specialists.
Warning Signs to Watch For
These symptoms can appear hours or days after your injury and mean you need immediate medical care:
- Being unconscious for 30 minutes to 24 hours: You cannot be awakened during this time
- Ongoing confusion: You don’t know where you are or what happened to you
- Throwing up repeatedly: This can mean pressure is building inside your skull
- Headaches that get worse: The pain increases instead of getting better
- Weakness or numbness: You cannot move or feel parts of your body normally
- Slurred speech: You have trouble forming words clearly
What Tests Show
With moderate brain injury, your CT scan or MRI will show problems like bruising, bleeding, or swelling in your brain. Doctors might put a special monitor in your head to watch the pressure inside your skull. Blood tests can also check for proteins that leak out when brain cells get damaged.
Treatment and Getting Better
Your treatment starts in the emergency room where doctors work to keep your brain safe. You might need surgery to remove blood clots or create space for your swollen brain. Your recovery team usually includes physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech therapists who help you relearn skills.
Recovery takes months or years, and everyone heals differently depending on which parts of their brain were hurt.
Severe Traumatic Brain Injury
A severe traumatic brain injury is a medical emergency that threatens your life. These injuries have a high risk of causing permanent disability or death and need immediate intensive care.
Emergency Signs That Require 911
Call for emergency help immediately if you see these signs:
- Cannot wake up: The person does not respond to loud voices or being shaken
- Seizures: Uncontrollable shaking or convulsions
- Pupils of different sizes: One eye’s pupil is much larger than the other
- Clear fluid from nose or ears: This might mean the skull is fractured
- Extreme confusion: Acting violent or very strange
- Repeated vomiting: Cannot stop throwing up
Intensive Care Treatment
Patients with severe brain injuries go to the intensive care unit where machines help them breathe and monitors track their brain function. Doctors use medications to reduce brain swelling and might perform surgery to remove blood clots, fix skull fractures, or make room for the swollen brain.
The medical team watches you constantly because your condition can change quickly.
Long-term Effects You Might Face
Severe brain injuries often cause permanent changes that affect every part of your life:
| Body System | Possible Problems |
| Physical | Cannot move parts of your body, constant pain, seizures |
| Thinking | Cannot remember things, trouble planning, slow thinking |
| Emotions | Depression, anxiety, personality changes |
| Communication | Cannot speak clearly or understand others |
Your recovery depends on which parts of your brain were damaged and how well your brain can adapt.
Primary vs. Secondary Brain Injury
Brain damage happens in two stages that doctors treat differently.
Primary injury is the immediate damage that occurs when your head gets hit. This includes bruising, bleeding, and tearing of brain tissue that happens at the moment of impact.
Secondary injury develops hours or days later as your brain reacts to the initial damage. Your brain might swell, lose oxygen, or have chemical changes that kill more brain cells. This delayed damage often causes more problems than the original injury.
Doctors focus heavily on preventing secondary injury because they can often control it with quick treatment.
Closed vs. Penetrating Brain Injuries
Brain injuries fall into two main categories based on whether your skull stays intact.
A closed brain injury happens when your skull is not broken but your brain gets damaged from being shaken violently inside your head. Most brain injuries from car accidents and falls are closed injuries.
A penetrating brain injury occurs when an object like a bullet or skull fragment breaks through and enters your brain tissue. These injuries cause severe damage to specific brain areas but might affect smaller regions than closed injuries.
Both types can range from mild to severe depending on the force involved and which brain areas get hurt.
Diffuse Axonal Injury
Diffuse axonal injury is a type of brain damage that happens when your brain’s connecting fibers get torn. These fibers, called axons, are like electrical wires that let different brain areas talk to each other.
This injury occurs when your head moves violently back and forth, like in high-speed car crashes. Your brain rotates inside your skull and the twisting motion tears these delicate connections.
The damage might not show up on your first CT scan or MRI because the tears are microscopic. But this injury can put you in a coma and cause serious long-term problems with thinking and awareness.
Levels of Consciousness After Severe Injury
After a severe brain injury, you might move through different stages of awareness as your brain heals.
A coma means you are completely unconscious with your eyes closed and cannot be awakened by any stimulus. A vegetative state means your eyes open and close but you show no awareness of yourself or your surroundings.
In a minimally conscious state, you show small but clear signs of awareness like following simple commands or reaching for objects purposefully. When you emerge from minimally conscious state, you can communicate consistently or use objects correctly.
Recovery through these stages can take months or years, and some people stop improving at any level.
Tests Doctors Use to Diagnose Brain Injuries
Medical professionals use several tools to figure out if you have a brain injury and how serious it is.
A neurological exam checks your reflexes, strength, coordination, and memory through simple tests.
- The Glasgow Coma Scale measures how awake and aware you are right after the injury.
- CT scans give doctors a quick look inside your head to find bleeding, bruising, or broken bones.
- MRI scans provide more detailed pictures and can spot subtle damage that CT scans miss.
- Blood tests look for special proteins that brain cells release when they get damaged.
Neuropsychological testing evaluates how well you can think, remember, and solve problems to understand how the injury affects your daily functioning.
When You Need Medical Care
Any head injury that causes symptoms needs to be checked by a doctor, even if you think it is minor.
You should see a doctor within 24 hours if you lost consciousness briefly, have a headache that will not go away, feel confused or cannot remember things clearly, or experience nausea and dizziness.
Call 911 immediately if you cannot wake someone up, they have seizures, they vomit repeatedly, their symptoms get worse over time, or clear fluid drains from their nose or ears.
Waiting to get help can let secondary brain injury develop and cause much more damage than the original injury.
How Brain Injuries Affect Children
Children’s brains are still growing and developing, which means a brain injury can affect them differently than adults. While young brains can sometimes heal better than adult brains, an injury can disrupt normal development in ways that do not show up until later.
Symptoms might not appear for months or years, when a child has trouble reaching normal developmental milestones or learning new skills. Parents should watch for changes in behavior, problems with learning, or loss of skills the child already had.
Children often cannot explain their symptoms clearly, so any change after a head injury should be taken seriously and evaluated by a doctor.
Getting Legal Help for Your Brain Injury in Las Vegas
Whether you are dealing with ongoing concussion symptoms or caring for someone with a severe brain injury, you are probably facing overwhelming medical bills and insurance company delays. We understand these challenges because we have helped brain injury victims throughout Las Vegas recover the compensation they need.
Our experience includes securing substantial compensation for injured clients, including a significant settlement for someone who suffered a serious head injury in an accident, as shown in our proven track record of successful verdicts and settlements.
Here is how Ladah Injury & Car Accident Lawyers Las Vegas helps brain injury victims:
- We understand the medical complexity: Our team works with neurologists and brain injury specialists to document the full impact of your injury.
- We know insurance company tactics: Several of our attorneys used to defend insurance companies, so we know how they try to minimize brain injury claims.
- No upfront costs: You pay nothing unless we win your case.
- Proven results: We have secured multiple seven and eight figure settlements for clients with brain injuries.
Nevada law gives you only two years from your accident date to file a personal injury claim. Do not wait while your medical bills pile up and your symptoms affect your ability to work and care for your family.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can You Have a Brain Injury if Your CT Scan Is Normal?
Yes, you can definitely have a brain injury even when your CT scan and MRI look completely normal. Mild brain injuries often cause chemical changes in your brain cells that are too small for current imaging technology to detect.
How Long Do Concussion Symptoms Usually Last?
Most people with concussions feel better within a few weeks to three months after their injury. However, about 10 to 15 percent of people experience symptoms that continue for a year or longer, a condition doctors call post-concussion syndrome.
Can You Get a Brain Injury Without Losing Consciousness?
You absolutely can have a serious brain injury without ever losing consciousness. Many concussions and mild brain injuries cause confusion, memory problems, and other symptoms while you remain awake the entire time.
When Is It Safe to Return to Work After a Brain Injury?
You can return to work only when your symptoms have resolved and your doctor clears you for normal activities. Going back too soon puts you at risk for second impact syndrome, a dangerous condition where another head injury occurs before your brain has fully healed, and victims with pre-existing conditions are protected by Nevada’s Eggshell Plaintiff Rule.
What Medical Records Should You Keep After a Head Injury?
Keep detailed records of all medical appointments, bills, and treatments related to your brain injury. Also maintain a daily symptom diary, documentation of missed work days, and receipts for any injury related expenses, as these prove the impact of your injury for insurance claims or legal cases.