When people slip and fall due to unsafe property conditions, their injuries are often immediately obvious. Painful fractures, visible lacerations and other injuries may make the need for medical attention immediately clear. Other times, people who slip and fall may assume they avoided serious injury. They check themselves and do not notice any visible or immediately painful injuries. They may then decline to report the incident and fail to seek medical attention.
People who are aware of the risk of invisible injuries after a same-level fall can react more effectively after a slip-and-fall occurs.
What are invisible injuries?
Invisible injuries are internal injuries. They do not necessarily produce immediate symptoms. As such, people might overlook these injuries until their symptoms worsen. Traumatic brain injuries are often referred to as the invisible injury.
People can hurt their brains and may not realize that they need medical care for days afterward. Pressure in the skull can slowly increase over time, worsening minor symptoms or producing new and alarming symptoms.
People can also sustain fractures that they do not notice immediately. Stable fractures leave the bone aligned, making it easy for people to miss the early warning signs of a broken bone. Finally, soft tissue injuries, such as whiplash, may not be immediately obvious until inflammation worsens, often leading to people waking up and extreme pain the day after they fall.
Having legal support is important for those seeking slip-and-fall compensation, especially if they had delayed symptom onset. People who understand the risk of an invisible injury are less likely to forgo reporting a slip-and-fall, which could complicate a premises liability lawsuit later.
