Sustaining a spinal cord injury can mean facing significant pain, mobility issues, loss of sensation, and a variety of other severe consequences. If the injury you suffered occurred because of another party’s negligent or wrongful conduct, you may be entitled to begin a personal injury claim to recover your losses.
Keep reading to learn more about these injuries and your rights.
To understand how serious spinal cord injuries are, it’s first important to know what makes up this component of your central nervous system.
Generally, your spinal cord transports nerve signals from your brain throughout your body and vice versa. It reports sensations to your brain, controls your body’s movements and autonomic processes, and manages your reflexes.
If the spinal cord is damaged, the consequences can be severe. Spinal cord injuries disrupt communications between your brain and the rest of the body. You can lose sensation, movement, and control over bodily functions.
The two main types of spinal cord injuries are complete and incomplete. Complete injuries result in the total loss of sensation and control below the site of the injury. With incomplete spinal cord injuries, you may retain some sensation and control below the site of the damage.
Spinal cord injuries can also be classified by the parts of the body that they impact. Hemiplegia, for example, can occur when paralysis affects only one side of the body. Paraplegia impacts the legs and trunk, along with the pelvic organs, and can be a result of an injury to the thoracic, lumbar, or sacral spine.
One of the most catastrophic injuries you can suffer is tetraplegia, also called quadriplegia. It typically involves harm to the cervical spine (neck) and causes paralysis of the arms, torso, legs, and pelvic organs.
Spinal cord injuries are usually the result of traumatic incidents, like speeding car accidents, falls, and workplace accidents. Suffering a direct strike to your back or experiencing violent twisting motions can all result in damage to the spinal cord.
It’s also possible for medical negligence to cause these injuries. If you have an infection that is not treated efficiently or a surgeon makes an error during a procedure and damages your spinal cord, you could face serious health consequences.
The treatment of a spinal cord injury will depend on its underlying cause and severity. All too often, there is no chance of reversing the damage that may have occurred to the spinal cord. You may need to have surgery to help align the spine and remove fragments of vertebrae.
For the majority of people, the focus will be on managing the damage through physical therapy. You can also rely on occupational therapy to learn how to perform daily tasks with your injury.
Medicines may also help manage pain and other symptoms. There are even medications that can assist with bladder and bowel control, as well as sexual function.
Most people who sustain spinal cord injuries will need to rely on some form of mobility device, such as walkers or wheelchairs. There are numerous other types of electronic aids to make daily life easier, too.
If the spinal cord injury you suffered occurred because of another party’s misconduct, you should consider pursuing a personal injury claim. These claims can help hold the responsible party accountable and allow you to recover compensation for medical expenses, ongoing care, lost wages, and other losses.
These claims generally require proving that the other party was responsible for your injury. You must establish that they owed you a duty of care that they failed to uphold. If this failure led directly to your spinal cord injury, you may be entitled to pursue a claim.
It’s vital that you hire an attorney with experience when it comes to cases involving catastrophic injuries. They will know how to present the necessary evidence and how to calculate the full value of your full losses. Additionally, they will know how to aggressively negotiate with insurance companies to assist you in getting fair compensation.
After suffering such a serious injury, it’s important to consider whether you can benefit from a personal injury claim. By taking the time to learn about the process and hiring experienced attorneys to manage everything, you are giving yourself a good chance of winning your claim.
At McMinn Personal Injury Lawyers, our Salt Lake City personal injury lawyers can guide you through this complex process. We work on a contingency fee basis, so you’ll pay nothing up front and only owe us attorneys’ fees if we recover compensation on your behalf. Contact us at (385) 462-7630 to schedule a free consultation to learn more about how we can help.