Brain injury caused by medical negligence can be particularly catastrophic, both for the injured person and for their friends and families. Living with a brain injury can take a lot of adjustment for everyone involved.

Brain injury can manifest itself in lots of different ways, from physical changes to psychological ones, depending on the nature of the injury.

For example, an injury to the frontal lobe can affect your executive function, emotional and impulse control and motivation. An injury to the brain stem can affect basic life functions such as breathing, heart rate and dysphagia (swallowing food and water).

Rehabilitation is vital to those suffering from a brain injury and where admissions are made, we aim to secure interim payments to assist with specialist accommodation, therapy, aids and equipment and care.

Brain injuries might be caused by negligence such as:

• Failure to diagnose conditions such as cerebral aneurysm (where the wall of an artery of a blood vessel in the brain is weakened, causing it to swell), meningitis, strokes, tumours and encephalitis (inflammation of the brain)
• Failure to perform scans such as X rays, MRI or CT scans
• Medication errors
• Mistakes during surgery including anaesthetic mistakes
• Hypoxic/anoxic brain injury – a lack of oxygen to the brain

Please also see our separate section on brain injuries caused before or at birth and traumatic brain injury.