University Of Alabama at Bingham researchers have stated that traumatic brain injuries (TBI) can reportedly have a negative effect on a patient's ability to make sound medical decisions for themselves at those moments when they and their families are confronted with numerous difficult issues. The seriousness of the injury was found to be directly related to the degree of impairment. Patients suffering from mild TBI reportedly showed a slight improvement after a month while those patients suffering from more severe TBI were found to have substantial impairments over the same time frame.

The study reportedly divided the patients into 3 categories; “mild, complicated mild, and moderate to severe” TBI. According to the researchers, mild TBI patients scored uniformly in all the areas while complicated mild TBI patients scored worse in understanding, but not in reasoning or appreciation. Observations of the moderate to severe TBI patients showed significantly inferior results in 3 out of the 5 areas. The results of this study are critical to those involved with caring for patients with TBI because there hasn’t been a lot of information available regarding how difficult it is for patients to mentally process complex medical issues.

Medical Malpractice News Brought To You By http://haskellaw.com