Brain Injury Tests Aren’t Perfect

The great educational series offered by the brain injury lawyers at Dolman Law Group continues today with a look at diagnostic testing. Dolman Law Group serves brain injury and personal injury sufferers from offices in Clearwater, Bradenton and Melbourne.

Myth No. 3:  A negative PET-scan, MRI or other similar diagnostic test illustrates no existence of a brain injury.  

The overall lack of sensitivity or specificity in many diagnostic tests makes the above statement a fallacy.

In the noted treatise Neuropsychiatry of Traumatic Brain Injury, the author states “many patients with a history of minor brain injury, will not have abnormalities found on an MRI yet can manifest clears signs of functional impairment on Neuropsychological measures.” The textbook Medical Rehabilitation of Traumatic Brain Injury the author illustrates many physicians who are not properly trained to deal with treating a TBI incorrectly assume that a patient with a negative MRI or CT- scan is in fact normal and has not sustained an injury. In turn, the author states “absence of proof is not proof of absence.”

As a personal injury attorney, I often come across treating physicians who still subscribe to this theory, which has been proven incorrect for a number of years now.