Brain Injury Forces Bobsled Driver Todd Hays to Retire
The N.Y. Times reported a bobsleding accident has stopped Todd Hays from participating in the sport at the Winter Olympics.
Many sports, while entertaining, can have devasting impacts on participants. Nevada, for example, recently ran stories on how its tax base is forced to pay for fighters who have injuries that cost more than $50,000. That amount is what is required of promoters to post as health related insurance for fighters. Fighting is a big Las Vegas draw.
The Las Vegas Review Journal reported recently that fighter Zeta Gorres is admitted at University Medical Center, Clark County's only public hospital. He has piled up about $500,000 in bills since he suffered a traumatic brain injury, and he won't be able to cover all the costs. Taxpayers are on the hook for most of the tab.
The 27-year-old is a bantamweight professional boxer who suffered injuries in a Nov. 13 fight against Luis Melendez on the Strip.
After nearly two months of constant nursing care and physical therapy, and after requiring some of the most advanced medical procedures available, Mr. Gorres is making progress.
The taxpayers of Southern Nevada are, unfortunately, accustomed to covering tens of millions of dollars worth of uncompensated care at UMC every year for all types of indigent patients, including illegal immigrants. But why now, when UMC is facing an $82 million deficit, is the public being asked to provide welfare to a professional fighter whose injuries were sustained during a state-sanctioned bout?
The reason is a horribly outdated state law that requires promoters to provide only $50,000 worth of health insurance for each fighter in the ring. That amount might cover a single trauma surgery. Fighters are not required to carry their own health insurance or supplementary coverage, and as a result, they usually don't. Mr. Gorres didn't.
The Nevada Athletic Commission can't expect the public, especially in this economy, to cover the costs of caring for injured fighters. The state must raise the minimum insurance requirement for professional bouts to $1 million per fighter or require promoters to pay into a pool that covers boxers' medical bills for catastrophic injuries suffered in the ring.
Hays, who won a silver medal in the 2002 Salt Lake Games, was having a strong season that included a second-place finish in a World Cup race in Park City Utah, and hoped he would race in 
his fourth Olympics. But the devastating accident happened during training for the four-man bobsled Dec. 9 in Winterberg, Germany. His resulting head injury has prompted him to retire.
Hays, 40, was initially diagnosed with a concussion, but a magnetic resonance imaging test revealed he had intraparenchymal hematoma, a serious and life-threatening injury where the brain bleeds.
Intracranial hemorrhage is a common cause of acute neurologic emergency. Pathologic accumulation of blood in the cranial vault may occur in the brain parenchyma or the surrounding meningeal spaces. Such accumulations can be epidural hematomas , subdural hematomas , subarachnoid hemorrhages , or intraventricular hemorrhages .
The etiology of Intracranial hemorrhage is multifactorial and varies with a person's age and predisposing factors.
I often represent clients who have sufferred from Intercranial hemorrhage and had it surgically removed. Many times they are able to leave the hospital and resume some semblance of normalcy. But I too frequently encounter lawyers, inurance adjusters, and jurors that have a predisposition to assume that if a person "looks ok" then they must "be ok."
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