What is mild brain injury?
Mild traumatic brain Injury is also called subtle acquired brain injury. People with mild or subtle brain injuries have cognitive, psychological and physical symptoms that occur after the injury. They usually do not experience a prolonged period of unconsciousness or coma. In fact, some individuals report no loss of consciousness.
“Mild” or “minor” brain injury can be a tragic misnomer because these injuries often cause lifelong disabilities. Typically, the diagnosis of mild brain injury is given where there is trauma to the brain, but the trauma results in only brief unconsciousness, or none at all, and the brain injuries do not show up on imaging studies such as an MRI or CT scan. The condition is sometimes called “post-concussion syndrome or disorder” or “post-traumatic syndrome,” with the latter term including those cases where there is no concussion. Various statistics estimate that two million people suffer traumatic brain injury each year in the United States of whom 400,000 are hospitalized. Tragically, while most of those suffering “mild” traumatic brain injury recover, there is a “miserable minority” who suffer lifelong consequences, sometimes involving profound disability.
