Traumatic brain injuries are a persistent issue worldwide, and they aren’t going away anytime soon. When someone experiences a disability or dies because of a Virginia motor vehicle accident, a significant portion of the time it’s because of a TBI.
The human and financial costs
From a financial perspective, the cost of this global public health concern exceeds $400 billion in the United States alone. It’s a health problem that afflicts 55 million globally, and it’s one of the main reasons why people die or become disabled from an injury.
A report from the University of Cambridge focused on TBIs in order to explore what it is that makes it so challenging to treat and prevent this problem. Their study uncovered some of the major hurdles in providing quality clinical care for TBIs as well as the obstacles that have prevented this issue from being mitigated.
Why this issue continues to persist
One of the challenges for clinicians is that the consequences of a TBI don’t always appear immediately. Unlike the acute aspects of the condition, which are dramatic and intense, it may take years for the full scope of the symptoms to show up.
When a person suffers a TBI, they may have an increased likelihood of experiencing late-onset neurodegeneration. The most common forms of this are dementia and Parkinson’s disease.
The vast majority of TBI incidents happen when people are in car crashes or experience a fall. But not all countries are experiencing traumatic brain injuries equally. New data indicates that in countries of lower- and middle-income levels, there are three times as many traffic-related TBIs as there are brain injuries caused by falls.
On the other hand, counties with higher income levels have twice the amount of fall-related TBIs than brain injuries resulting from road accidents. Using this data, analysts and legislators can potentially work together to use this data and better protect people around the world from these types of serious injuries.