There is a good chance you will find yourself in a car accident during your lifetime. The severity of the crash may prove a bump in the road, or it may alter the course of your life significantly.
Some injuries may necessitate extensive medical care and rehabilitation. In these cases, medical appointments and medication may continue for the foreseeable future. If you or someone you love has an injury that a doctor has deemed catastrophic, it helps to understand what that may mean. Take a look at some of the basics that qualify an injury as catastrophic.
Recovery expectations
After getting in an accident in which you get hurt, you may need a few days or weeks to get back on your feet. Some injuries, however, are more severe and leave you with a different recovery expectation. Suffering a catastrophic injury due to an especially damaging accident may make recovery impossible. The difference between this type of injury and a less serious one is that there is no real expectation of a full recovery. In fact, catastrophic injuries leave patients with lifetime ramifications and disabilities. Medical care is usually ongoing, with little to no hope of the condition improving.
Examples of catastrophic injuries
While any accident may lead to some measure of injury, catastrophic ones result in the long-standing loss of some primary function. Some examples of these injuries include:
- Limb loss
- Spinal cord injury
- Traumatic brain injury
- Burns
The limitations resulting from these type of injuries vary on a case by case basis. However, generally speaking, a person dealing with damage like the above examples typically can never resume the life he or she had before the accident.
Go to this link for more factors in dealing with catastrophic injuries caused by an accident.
