As most people are well aware traumatic brain injuries can be serious and impact the life of the person who suffers it far into the future. Accordingly, determining how serious a TBI is in a timely manner is important. It could help to determine how the patient should be treated. A new diagnostic tool was recently put in to place via a joint effort between the Children’s Hospital of Alabama and University of Alabama’s Birmingham School of Optometry.
This partnership makes sense since vision issues are one of multiple problems that someone who has suffered a TBI could face. These issues can be compounded when a person participates in activities that then lead to a second concussion.
Called the Vestibular and Oculomotor Research Laboratory, researchers located at the lab are seeking to use binocular eye movement and stimulus to determine what the brain is doing. It is possible that ultimately the method could be used by optometrists to determine how severe a brain injury is. It could also help optometrists to be preventative and possibly even prevent second concussions from occurring.
While VORLab is currently focused on concussions suffered by young people participating in sports it easy to see how anything learned could be applied to those who suffered a TBI another way such as in a car crash or workplace accident.
Treating and living with a TBI can result in great expenses to the person who has suffered it as well as his or her family. Accordingly, when someone suffers a brain injury that is the result of another person’s negligence, a personal injury lawsuit could be appropriate.
