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Today John is going to help me explain a concept known as a failure to diagnose a subdural
hematoma. Would you like to learn what I mean? Come join me. Hi, I’m Gerry Oginski I’m
a New York medical malpractice and personal injury trial attorney practicing law here
in the state of New York. This is John, he’s an anatomical model and I’ve been playing
with him all afternoon and I want to use this few moments to explain to you what a subdural
hematoma is and how a failure to diagnose it resulted in tremendous injuries. A subdural
hematoma, first of all a hematoma is a collection of blood. Subdural means it’s under the
dura. It’s under the skull. Now when somebody suffers an injury to the head either through
a car accident or from a fall, and they hit their head, what sometimes can happen is you
can get bleeding inside your skull. Now there’s a problem with that. Because when you have
a collection of blood that occurs under the skull, there’s no place for the blood to
go. So what winds up happening is that it can form a collection of blood and it can
form a, form a lot of pressure around the brain and when that happens, now the brain
can get impacted and you can start to have neurological symptoms and problems as a result
of that. So if John were to suffer a subdural hematoma, the injury can occur to any part
of the brain but when you have the collection of blood with no place to go, the only place
to go is down, towards the brain. And when there’s enough pressure to impact and cause
the brain to have neurological problems that’s a significant problem. And you can have neurological
symptoms and problems from vomiting to nausea to dizziness to slurred speech to having your
pupils different sizes or maybe they’re not reactive. And that is suggestive, all
of those these suggestive of head trauma. Now when they go into the emergency room,
one of the things that they’re supposed to evaluate neurologically is whether or not
they can track your eyes. Also they want to find out whether the pupils are reactive and
whether they are the same size because if they’re not, it’s going to indicate and
suggest that there’s some significant head trauma going on. And there are different diagnostic
tests that the doctors in the emergency room can use in order to evaluate whether or not
you have a subdural collection of blood and they can use a CAT scan or an MRI scan and
depending upon what they’re specifically looking for they’re going to use one or
the other, and sometimes both. They typically will also use an x-ray as an initial screening
tool to see whether or not there’s a fracture. Now I will tell you that you can have trauma
to the head without a fracture and develop a collection of blood. How can that happen?
Well here’s a perfect example. Let’s say you fall and injure your leg and shortly afterwards
you get a black and blue mark on your leg. Well that’s a collection of blood under
the skin. Now in your leg, it dissipates out through the muscles and under the skin area.
But in the brain it has no place, in the skull it has no place to go. So if it’s severe
enough and it is causing neurological symptoms one of the treatments for subdural hematoma,
once the doctors recognize it, is to get the patient into surgery, cut open the skull and
now relieve the pressure and relieve the blood. Many times the doctors will have to put a
drain in in order to release the fluid and allow the brain the ability to swell and once
the healing process has resolved and the swelling decreases then they can close that up. So
why do I tell you about this today? And, John, you’ve been really good and helpful thanks
so much. I tell you about this because chances are you may’ve been in an accident and suffered
an injury to your head and have had a subdural hematoma. You’re probably are wondering
whether or not your condition was timely diagnosed because if it wasn’t there’s a possibility
you could suffer permanent irreversible brain damage. And if you do have questions and your
matter happened here in the state of New York, what I encourage you to do is pick up the
phone and call me. I answer legal questions like yours every single day. You can reach
me at 516-487-8207 or by email at lawmed10@yahoo.com. I’m Gerry Oginski, here in New York. Thanks
for watching.