Brain Injury Category Archives — Page 2 of 7 — DC Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog Published by Washington, D.C. Personal Injury Lawyers

November 22, 2019

For safety’s sake: Pedestrians, put down the phone! Bikers, put on the helmet!

With the pedestrian death toll climbing to scary levels and bike-vehicle accidents zooming up too, individuals may need to take common sense steps to safeguard themselves and not rely on motorists or traffic planners for their safety.

Just as drivers need to put away electronic devices while they’re on the road, so, too, should folks on foot give up risky texting or online browsing on their smart phones while walking, experts say. And, though they may not be keen on them, helmets offer bikers important protections and they should be donned by riders regularly.

And if you’re zipping around on a scooter, your head is even more vulnerable than if you’re on a bike.

October 16, 2019

Get ready, Washingtonians — 20,000 scooters soon may be part of cityscape

by Patrick A. Malone

In the cooler, rainier autumnal weather, transportation officials may be planting the seeds of significant change for the health, safety, and way that residents and visitors get around Washington, D.C. They may allow a smaller number of private companies to double the number of scooters zipping around the nation’s capital by the new year. By the spring, the devices may quadruple in number.

This could mean the estimated 5,000 or more scooters in the district now would increase to 10,000 by January and to 20,000 by June.

District officials say they’re responding to a spike in demand from the public for convenient ways to get around and to do so with needing to use multiple clumsy and confusing smart phone apps.

August 22, 2019

Do health care’s perverse incentives lure MDs into deliberate misdiagnosis for profit?

by Patrick A. Malone

When doctors become medical outliers, shouldn’t hospitals, colleagues, insurers, and the rest of us ask how and why an individual practitioner diverges so much from the way others provide care?

Olga Khazan details for the Atlantic magazine the disturbing charges involving Yasser Awaad, a pediatric neurologist at a hospital in Dearborn, Mich. As she describes him, for a decade he racked up hundreds of cases in which he is accused by patients of “intentionally misreading their EEGs and misdiagnosing them with epilepsy in childhood, all to increase his pay.” Khazan says his case “shines a light on the grim world of health-care fraud—specifically, the growing number of doctors who are accused of performing unnecessary procedures, sometimes for their own personal gain.”

In the malpractice cases that are unfolding against him, Awaad’s pay has become a central issue, with evidence showing his hospital contract rewarded him for boosting the number of screenings he ordered and diagnoses he made. Jurors have been told that Awaad, whose salary increased from 1997 to 2007 from $185,000 annually to $300,000, “turned that EEG machine into an ATM.” He earned bonuses exceeding $200,000, if he hit billing targets.

August 20, 2019

As NFL talks up lesser head harms, study shows repeated slams injure brains

by Patrick A. Malone

Although commentators and pro football itself have argued that rule changes by the National Football League have notably reduced possible head harms, new evidence from college athletes shows that even knocks that aren’t severe enough to be deemed concussions may injure young brains.

Those findings come from a University of Rochester study based on brain scans and helmet data from members of the school’s Division III football team (shown above), the New York Times reported.

Researchers scanned the athletes’ mid-brain area twice, once before the season kicked off and at its end. They did so because that region would most likely show the effects of impacts, including those that might be tougher to gauge in other areas of the brain. They also compiled data from special equipment on players’ helmets, registering the number and intensity of every impact — not just from player collisions but also when athletes hit the ground.

January 25, 2019

What’s prodding contact sports’ big shifts on head trauma? Insurance companies’ ‘panic’

by Patrick A. Malone

Parents and young athletes may have wrestled with the decision whether to play contact sports, as research shows the injuries that players can suffer from blows to the head. But lesser known parties to the games may be the undoing of professional and organized soccer, hockey, and football: Insurance companies.

The firms, which provide necessary and invaluable protections to players and organizations by spreading the financial risks of harms, have fled professional and amateur sports, declining to offer them coverages, even at high costs, Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada of ESPN’s Outside the Lines program reported.

Insurers are balking not only at providing liability policies but also worker compensation for pros, ESPN says. The dearth of coverage has hit hard the NFL, collegiate and Pop Warner programs, as well as football helmet makers. They’re forced to hunt far and wide for the few firms willing to assume sports risks — and they pay high and accordingly, if they can get policies.

November 23, 2018

NHL short-changes players and medical science in concussion settlement

by Patrick A. Malone

The National Hockey League, with its new settlement of claims on head injuries, has done the sport and its most important component — players, past, present, and future — no service. Instead, the game’s leaders have shown a disregard for factual medical science, and an excess appreciation for profits over people.

In contrast to the $1-billion concussion accord between the National Football League and its players, the NHL deal is parsimonious, amounting to $19 million or so. It breaks down, in brief, in this way, according to ESPN:

The settlement calls for a payment of at least $22,000 for settling plaintiffs and settling unfiled claims. Besides the cash payout, the NHL’s settlement involves neurological testing and assessment for players paid for by the league, as well as an administrative fund to pay for the costs and up to $75,000 in medical treatment for players who test positive on two or more tests. The settlement also calls for a ‘Common Good Fund’ that would support retired players in need. That would include players who did not participate in the litigation. The NHL also agreed to pay almost $7 million in plaintiff legal fees.

September 28, 2018

In renewed call for baby walker ban, a reminder how hazards hang around

by Patrick A. Malone

Little ones may prove to be a handful to get around, but grownups need to be wary of products to make babies mobile.

Child safety advocates have not only re-upped their warnings, in particular, about infant walkers, but based on a new study of data from hundreds of thousands of emergency room visits between 1990 and 2014, experts have called on federal regulators anew to ban the manufacture and sale of this product across the country.

Researchers found that “more than 230,000 children under 15 months old were treated in U.S. hospital emergency departments for skull fractures, concussions, broken bones and other injuries related to infant walkers,” National Public Radio reported.

September 14, 2018

Common sense on kids and concussions, adult heart disease, frats and booze

by Patrick A. Malone

Common sense and moderation can matter a ton in maintaining good health, as recent news reports show, particularly with kids and concussions, middle-aged adults and heart disease, and collegiate alcohol abuse.

With youngsters returning to school and so many of them participating in sports and recreation programs, it’s good that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued evidence-based guidance on protecting kids who suffer mild traumatic brain injury or what most of us would call concussions.

These injuries have become a growing concern for parents and young athletes. Sports leagues and sporting groups are coming to a time of reckoning with just how harmful head trauma can be.

September 6, 2018

As 2018 season kicks off, college football reckons with head trauma harms

by Patrick A. Malone

College football has kicked off its fall season with a flourish, but the signs are increasing that concerns about players’ health and safety may slash at the game’s size, spectacle, and importance.

Just as the pro leagues were forced to answer in court for the harms that athletes suffer due to repeated blows to their heads, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has been hit with claims in the civil justice system, asserting wrongful deaths of players from the recent past.

Lawsuits, believed to be part of what will be a wave, were filed against the college sports conference on behalf of the survivors and estates of a onetime University of Southern California fullback and a University of California at Los Angeles running back.

August 24, 2018

Millions of teens suffer concussions as experts link head trauma to suicide risk

by Patrick A. Malone

Rigorous researchers avoid leaping to unfounded conclusions, but it’s hard not to look at two separate studies on areas of high current interest and just go “Hmmm ….”

In the first work, experts from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed available reports and surveys to find that 15.1 percent of American high school students or 2.5 million or so “reported having at least one of these concussions” in the most recent year, while 6 percent reported two or more concussions.

The researchers said: