Actress Succumbs To Traumatic Brain Injury

New York, NY[Update: A coroner has confirmed that the cause of Natasha Richardson's death was an epidural hematoma caused by blunt impact to the head. Her death has been ruled an accident.]

It was the tumble heard around the world. On Monday, March 16, actress Natasha Richardson, only 45 years old, fell down while skiing on a beginner's slope. Two days later, she died from her traumatic brain injury. What happened between the time Richardson fell and the time she passed away serves as a chilling reminder of the possible outcomes of a brain injury; paralysis, brain damage and even death. While personal injury law cannot protect you from a brain injury, it can help to ensure that all your medical and financial needs are met, if your injury winds up impacting you financially.

The facts of Richardson's fall are surprisingly, confusingly simple. She was skiing down a beginner's slope at a luxury Montreal ski resort when she took a tumble. By all accounts, it was a minor fall, the kind many skiers experience in an average day on the slopes. Richardson was with a private ski instructor, who immediately came to her aid and called ski patrol. Ski patrol assessed Richardson, who joked about the fall and said she felt fine.

However, in keeping with the resort's policy, patrol escorted her to the base of the mountain and insisted she see a doctor. Richardson said there was no need and went back to her suite, with a member of ski patrol and her instructor along to make sure she was okay.

If this were a typical story, Richardson would have been fine within a few hours. But something happened—something that Richardson did not know about immediately and that ski patrol did not, or could not, assess. To an outsider, that something is incredibly scary and incomprehensible, but people familiar with traumatic brain injuries know that this kind of thing can, and does, happen.

An hour after returning to her hotel room, Richardson complained about severe headaches and was reportedly vomiting. She was sent to a nearby hospital for treatment and then moved to another hospital in Montreal. Richardson's husband, actor Liam Neeson, rushed to her side. Her condition continued to worsen and she was transported to New York so that family and close friends could say good-bye. Only 2 days after experiencing a minor fall on a ski slope, Richardson died.

Richardson fell on soft snow, did not appear to have hit her head and did not lose consciousness after the fall, so what could have happened that would result in her death? Experts who are experienced with brain injuries say there are a number of things that could have happened—all of which serve as a warning to the public to be careful in situations that may seem harmless at first.

One possibility is that when Richardson fell, she tore an artery inside her skull, likely between the skull and the matter covering the brain. That tear can bleed heavily and cause a blood clot to expand, resulting in pressure on the brain. The condition, called an epidural hematoma, is not immediately apparent in patients. In fact, they are often quite lucid after the injury but their health declines as the pressure on their brain increases. If surgery is not undertaken quickly enough to relieve pressure, patients will suffer brain damage and can die from the condition.

Doctors have suggested that Richardson suffered from something called "talk and die" syndrome, in which bleeding that occurs between the skull and brain stem is delayed. Patients seem fine after the trauma and may think there is nothing wrong. However, as the condition in their brain deteriorates they, too, deteriorate and their chances for survival decrease.

One of the main difficulties with traumatic brain injuries is that symptoms often do not appear until enough pressure has built in the brain to cause the symptoms, but by then the situation is critical. Swelling in the brain causes additional trauma to the brain, which then results in more swelling. The brain can only take so much swelling before it presses down on the brain stem, decreasing breathing and other necessary functions.

So, what does all this mean to the average person? It means that if you have experienced a bump on the head or a sudden force to the head (such as extreme jerking back and forth), do not assume that you are okay just because you feel fine in the minutes following the trauma. Traumatic brain injuries can take hours, days and sometimes weeks to appear.

Furthermore, if you have experienced trauma and weeks later suffered headaches, dizziness or vision problems, you need to seek medical help immediately. It is easy to dismiss such issues as not being related to the initial trauma because they took so long to appear, but it is still possible that they were caused by that trauma.

Even if your head has not suffered a direct blow, damage to the brain can still occur. If the head is moved forward and back quickly enough, the brain can impact the skull, causing brain damage. For example, in a car accident with sudden jerking motion forward and backward, you may not hit your head on anything but you may still experience a brain injury.

Traumatic brain injuries are serious and can result in brain damage or even death if not treated quickly enough. If you have been involved in an accident and are concerned about a possible brain injury, seek medical help as soon as possible.