Types of Injuries

There is no single definition for serious injuries. Some factors that might make an injury serious include:

Serious injuries, sometimes called “catastrophic” injuries, usually involve greater damages due to the losses they cause. For example, you can often seek compensation for the wages you would have earned over your remaining working life when you suffer a serious injury that totally and permanently disables you.

An electric current can affect you in many ways. Your body is mostly made of water, so the current wants to run through it to the ground.

As it passes through your tissue, it can cause electrocution injuries by overloading brain cells, damaging nerves, or even stopping your heart. It also heats the water in your body, producing internal and external burns.

Burns happen when a chemical or physical reaction destroys your skin and other tissues. Some examples of burn injuries include:

Your skin keeps water inside your body and pathogens out. When you suffer a burn, you have an increased risk of infection and dehydration. Severe burns can also produce scars and contractures that disfigure you.

Traumatic brain injuries describe damage to the brain cells from head trauma or violent shaking. Some examples of traumatic brain injuries include:

Since your brain controls your entire body, a brain injury can cause physical, cognitive, or emotional symptoms. In severe cases, the injury may even cause permanent brain damage, coma, or death.

Your spinal cord connects your brain to your body. The spinal cord includes 31 pairs of nerves. Each pair controls the right and left sides of a body region. Spinal cord injuries happen when the spinal nerves get severed, compressed, or stretched.

The most severe spinal cord injury is quadriplegia, followed closely by paraplegia. Both of these conditions produce permanent paralysis and loss of sensation. Other spinal cord injuries can cause weakness, numbness, and loss of dexterity in the affected body regions.

Up to 80% of the information your brain gathers comes through your eyes. As visual creatures, humans suffer severely when they lose their vision. Vision loss can result from an eye injury, damage to the optical nerve, or a brain injury.

Depending on your profession, vision loss can disable you from working. It also prevents you from performing your daily activities like driving and shopping.

Hearing loss can also have a profound impact on your quality and enjoyment of life. In addition to impairing your hearing, an injury to your auditory system can affect your:

You can use assistive technology to perform many activities. However, hearing loss can still impact your ability to work. You may even suffer from social isolation.

When your child suffers an injury due to someone else’s actions, you need both justice and financial compensation. Depending on the child or infant’s injury, your child may face a lifetime of medical treatment and therapy. They may be unable to acquire an education or get a job. They may even need a caretaker for the rest of their life.

Your back and neck support your weight and allow you to bend and twist your head and body. When you experience a neck or back injury, you might suffer from chronic pain, nerve damage, and disabilities. Some common neck and back injuries include:

When you suffer a neck or back injury, you will likely require medical treatment and physical therapy. Since back pain is the leading cause of missed work days in the U.S., you will also likely have income losses.