Required Reading in Brain Injury

I. REQUIRED READING:

• Gronwall and Wrightson, Mild Head Injury, Oxford, 1999.
• Muriel Lezak, Neuropsychological Assessment, 3rd, Oxford, 1995.
• R.W. Evans, Neurology and Trauma, ©W.B. Saunders, 1996.

A. Mild Head Injury, 1999. Simply the Best thing ever published on non-coma brain injuries. It is concise, easy to read and reflects the cumulative experience of two of the great healers in the field of brain injury. Dr. Gronwall and Dr. Wrightson provide the most current treatment and easily understood treatment of brain injury I have read. The irony is that this most current piece, incorporating all that we have learned in the generation since their PASAT study of 1974, says much of the same things that Drs. Gronwall and Wrightson have been telling us all along. What we get in addition in Mild Head Injury is the pearls of wisdom of 25 more years of enlightened clinical experience with subtlely injured minds - 25 years of enlightened clinical research from minds that that were a generation ahead when they started.

B. Lezak. I have come to the conclusion to handle a brain injury case without the use of Lezak, Neuropsychological Assessment, 3rd, Oxford, 1995 ("Lezak"), is a serious mistake. It is clearly the leading treatise in the field of neuropsychology, which from my perspective, equates to the leading treatise in the field of brain injury. Included herewith are excerpts from reviews of such text. What is more, relatively few defense neuropsychologists will deny the authoritativeness of this work. It is worthy of note that it has been endorsed by the periodical Neurology, the publication of the American Academy of Neurology, as the leading text in the field of neuropsychological assessment. More specific references to this work will be discussed below, but I would put into the must read category, its Chapter 7 on Neuropathology for Neuropsychologists. Frankly, this chapter could be renamed as "Neuropathology for Neurologists and TBI Lawyers", as it covers so much of what we fight about in these cases. Also significant are her treatments of general concepts of memory and premorbid ability estimates.

C. Neurology and Trauma. This general treatment of trauma as it relates to neurological conditions is also outstanding, especially its epidemiological and mild brain injury chapters. Caveat: it stands as strong authority against the correlation between trauma and multiple sclerosis.

Understanding Subtle Brain Injury

The concussions that disable, are almost always more symptomatic at 24 hours, than at the 2-4 hour time frame when injured persons are evaluated in the emergency room. Brain injury symptoms escalate over the first 24 hours, because brain injury involves a cascade of events. It is critical that if you are still symptomatic the day after your injury, go back to the same Emergency Room, don’t wait for a doctors appointment. It is critical that the Emergency Room personnel see that the symptoms still persist or have gotten worse.

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