Employees of the National Catastrophic Injury team are taking part in Headway's annual Action for Brain Injury Week, which starts today (17 May).

The week is designed to focus resources on raising awareness of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and the difficulties faced by people affected by it.

This widely recognised annual campaign is aimed at raising awareness of diagnosing and treating minor head injuries, such as post-concussion syndrome. Often when people attend hospital after relatively minor accidents they are unaware of head injury symptoms, or the extent of these symptoms, until much later on.

Sometimes, for example people forget that in an accident they jarred or banged their head. Sometimes they may not have had a direct blow to the head at all.

TBI can be caused when the brain is shaken around by a sudden force, for example being thrown suddenly forwards and backwards in road traffic accidents. Quite often people are in shock or are more concerned with other, more obvious, injuries. For these reasons, TBI is known as the 'hidden injury'

It's estimated that 75-80% of all head injuries fall into this 'minor' category and yet the symptoms can be quite disabling and can last for weeks, months, or even years.

It's vital that people know what to look out for and when to seek specialist treatment, such as seeking a referral to a neurologist or neuropsychologist.

Common symptoms include:

• headaches
• drowsiness
• vomiting or nausea
• memory problems
• irritability
• disorientation
• blurred vision
• deafness in one or both ears
• loss of balance
• weakness in arms or legs
• problems understanding or speaking

These symptoms might not be properly linked to a TBI or may not be reviewed at A&E or by your GP. Even if scans are performed, the results don't always show that there's been damage to the structures of the brain, so it's important to seek further medical treatment and specialist advice. See Headway's national campaign: http://www.headway.org.uk/Modules/Content/Default.aspx?contentID=357

People suffering TBI often need help with rehabilitation and seeking appropriate treatments and practical help, as there may be a need to take time off work, or adjustments may be required with help in returning to work. These are areas our Catastrophic Injury team can help with.

In order to promote the campaign and demonstrate our support to this worthy cause, our employees will be taking part in a Hats for Headway day, on Friday. We'll be giving a donation to Headway to be able to wear wacky hats to work.

Access Legal from Shoosmiths specialises in TBI claims. If you have any queries regarding a claim, please don't hesitate to contact us on 03700 868686.

We have successfully identified a number of 'missed' brain injury patients when dealing with claims arising out of accidents.

Unfortunately, it's an all too frequent occurrence, particularly in multiple fracture cases, where trauma units are dealing with other life threatening injuries and urgent orthopaedic surgery.

In these cases we've successfully managed to refer clients back into the NHS and enabled them to be properly assessed by a neurologist and neuro-psychologist. And obviously we've  also been able to increase the client's damages as a result of recognising their head injury symptoms.

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