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 Posted on March 20, 2014 in Brain Injuries

No parent wants to see their child hurt or suffer, particularly from an injury to the head. However, traumatic brain injuries are the leading cause of disability and death in children and adolescents. According to Mayo Clinic, newborns through age four and teenagers from 15 to 19 years of age are at the highest risk for suffering from a traumatic brain injury. If your child has suffered from a traumatic brain injury, call Shevlin Smith to speak with a Fairfax brain injury lawyer about your case.

Sadly, traumatic brain injuries in children are most often caused by:

• Falls
• Motor vehicle crashes
• Child abuse

You should seek medical attention if you believe your child has suffered from a traumatic brain injury based on the following symptoms of a moderate to severe head injury:

• Deep cut/laceration on head

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 Posted on March 15, 2014 in News

If you've seen the motion picture Avatar, you'll know that the alien race, the Na'vi, used the ends of their braids as basic USB ports to communicate and control objects. This same basic premise has recently started to make headway in the research of spinal cord treatments. A study, published in this year's Nature Communication, suggests that a computer chip could be used to help aid movement in paralyzed bodies by linking the brain to the spinal cord through technology.

How it Works

Ziv Williams, a Harvard neurosurgeon and co-author of the study, claims the concept is a viable treatment option, as the study successfully linked two monkeys together, via chip, allowing one monkey to control the actions and movements of the other.

"What we basically did was create a [link by bypassing neurons in the spinal cord that normally record information from the brain], so we're able to directly record the brain's neural signals, extract information about what the monkey is intending on doing and then basically stimulate the spinal cord to [produce the movement]," Dr. Williams told reporters.

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 Posted on March 12, 2014 in Birth Injuries

When you first became pregnant, all you knew about nutrition and pregnancy were the basics: no caffeine, no alcohol, and definitely no smoking. Your doctor would tell you the rest, and with a healthy diet, you looked forward to raising a happy, healthy baby.

However, you may not have been told that a mother's blood sugar can also affect the health of an infant, and if not controlled carefully, a mother's glucose levels can lead to a serious Virginia diabetes birth injury.

Many women develop diabetic symptoms throughout the course of their pregnancy (called gestational diabetes). While the correlation between gestational and type-1 or-2 diabetes in pregnancy is not clear, gestational diabetes symptoms should be monitored closely to avoid health risks to both mother and child.

A recent UK study of over 400,000 pregnant women confirmed some worrying points about diabetes and pregnancy complications:

• 72 out of every 1,000 women with diabetes experienced major birth defects in their children, a rate nearly four times higher than in women who did not have diabetes.

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 Posted on March 12, 2014 in News

You see them everyday in coffee houses, bars, libraries, and on the street. However, what you don't see is the daily suffering of these men and women who served our country.

Washington D.C. is the home of nearly 30,000 veterans. Estimates suggest that one in six-or 5,000 of these soldiers-suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD is an anxiety disorder often attributed to veterans that can occur as a result of the traumatic experiences of war. However, new data from the Institute of Medicine claims that the risk of PTSD can also be increased by exposure to explosive forces.

The IED Link to PTSD

During the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, hundreds of thousands of IEDs (improvised explosive devices)-jury-rigged bombs-have exploded, killing and physically wounding thousands of soldiers. However, the initial assessment of these wounds may have overlooked internal brain damage caused by the concussive explosion itself.

The IOM recently released a report stating that during these explosions, "the body absorbs a blast shock wave, sometimes causing nervous system or tissue damage that's not apparent in the aftermath."

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 Posted on March 12, 2014 in Birth Injuries

Pregnancy can be both an exciting and terrifying time for a mother. There are so many things to prepare for, so many things to remember, and so many things that could go wrong.

That's why many women rely on the knowledge and advice of their OB-GYN. A licensed prenatal doctor would never ignore potentially harmful risks to a patient's baby, would he?

Maybe not on purpose-but a case of simple neglect could drastically affect you and your child.

Did your doctor put your child at risk? Order our FREE book to find out: Do I Have A Case? A Patient's Guide to Virginia Medical Negligence Law

Placental Abruption is the medical term for the separation of the placenta from the uterine wall. While many factors can lead to abruption, the most frequent cause is abdominal trauma, such as a car accident or other violent act. It may also be an effect of drug use, heavy drinking, increased age, high blood pressure or diabetes.

Whatever the cause, placental abruption in Virginia can have severe consequences for you and your baby, including:

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 Posted on March 07, 2014 in Birth Injuries

From the moment your son or daughter is born, you follow every precaution to make sure your baby is protected. Whenever she sniffles, you panic-and either call your mom or consult webMD, to see if sniffling is normal. You keep your best friend (who had a cold two weeks ago) away from your house in case he is still contagious.

Understanding SIDS

But there are some events that you cannot predict or prepare for, no matter what you do. The absolute worst scenario that every parent fears is sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

SIDS is not only the leading cause of infant deaths, but it's also terrifyingly mysterious. There are several theories on what causes SIDS, ranging from suffocation to spinal cord injuries to birth defects. The only things that can be agreed upon is that SIDS occurs while sleeping and it affects breathing.

Symptoms of SIDS

Since the cause is still uncertain, preventative actions are limited. The only thing you can do is decrease the possibility of suffocation by removing excess material from the crib and sleeping areas, and by watching out for symptoms of breathing or spinal cord problems. These symptoms include:

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 Posted on March 06, 2014 in Birth Injuries

You are your baby's best advocate and fiercest champion. There isn't anything that you would refuse to do if it could benefit your child. You have worked hard to get your child the medical care that he or she needs and to determine the cause of your child's birth injuries. You are reasonably confident that your child was injured because of your doctor's negligence during pregnancy, labor, or delivery. You understandably want to help your child and fight for his or her fair and just recovery, but can you do it alone? Would your child benefit if you hired a Fairfax birth injury lawyer?

There Are Benefits to Hiring a Virginia Birth Injury Attorney

Together, you and an experienced Virginia birth injury lawyer can help your child. Your devotion and love combined with your attorney's knowledge and skill may be an unstoppable force. By hiring an attorney you are:

• Making sure that your child's legal rights are protected
• Freeing up your time to care for and enjoy your child

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 Posted on March 02, 2014 in Spinal Cord Injuries

You absolutely hate putting up Christmas lights. You're afraid you'll fall and break something. Despite your fear, every year your wife and in-laws convince you to climb up that ladder and string 50 strands of lights on the roof. However, due to the fact that you twisted your ankle last week, you foolishly thought you would get out of it this year. You were painfully wrong.

After much protesting, your father-in-law held the ladder as you hobbled up the rungs one at a time. Although shaky, you managed to clip ten strands before disaster struck. As you reached down to untangle the eleventh strand, you lost your balance and fell 12 feet, landing backward on top of the bare rosebushes.

Your father-in -law helped you inside the house and sat you down on the couch. He took off your coat and checked your back. He told you that you already had a large bruise forming across your spine but besides that it didn't look like you had broken anything. You told your wife that you were in pain but it could have been worse. She managed to pull your boots off and told you to flex your feet so she could take off your wet socks. Then you noticed it. You couldn't move your feet.

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 Posted on February 28, 2014 in News

Recovering from a spinal cord injury can be an arduous process resulting in daily anxiety, stress, and physical exhaustion. Sleep becomes a welcome relief from these pressures, and it allows spinal cord injury (SCI) victims a time to relax and escape their daily struggles. However, some SCI victims may suffer from sleep apnea, which disrupts this much-needed sleep and also increases their chances of cardiovascular death.

A new study, conducted at the John D. Dingell VA Medical Center and Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit, suggests that certain spinal cord injuries-specifically injuries to the neck, upper spine, or thoracic area-can cause or intensify sleep apnea. Sleep apnea occurs when the body stops breathing regularly while asleep, generally causing disruption in sleep patterns. There are two common forms:

• Obstructive Sleep Apnea: Airways become blocked (obstructed) or collapse during sleep, preventing the necessary airflow for regular breathing.

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 Posted on February 21, 2014 in Medical Malpractice

When anyone goes in for surgery, they are aware that there may be some side effects after waking up from the surgery. For example, patients often experience pain and nausea for days following surgery. Although these side effects are to be expected, some people wake up from surgery to find out that the pain and nausea they are feeling are actually due to an operation that occurred on the wrong part of their body.

It may seem unimaginable that a surgeon could get it wrong and perform an operation in the wrong place; however, wrong-site surgeries-while rare-do happen. In fact, estimates place wrong-site incidents at as many as 40 per week in the U.S., according to the Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare.

Wrong-site operations can include performing surgery on the wrong side of a person's body or the wrong body part. Any time a wrong-site surgery occurs, a patient will suffer the following:

• Another surgery. When the wrong part of the body is operated on, inevitably a person will have to go through another surgery to perform the original procedure and possibly to fix a problem created by the mistake. Additional surgeries create more medical bills, more pain, more treatment, more time to heal, and more lost income.

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