Baltimore Magazine by Lauren LaRocca March 2022
While people are becoming more aware of traumatic brain injuries, such as the kind you receive from a blow to the head, non-traumatic brain injuries—anoxic and hypoxic injuries caused by oxygen deprivation—have similar chronic effects, and can be just as detrimental and tricky to treat.
The pandemic, meanwhile, has become a perfect storm for these types of brain injuries. COVID itself can result in lack of oxygen and strokes. (That loss of taste and smell that continues for several weeks or months after a COVID infection? Experts say it can be due to brain damage.) The pandemic has also exacerbated domestic violence and drug abuse, both of which often lead to brain injury—through overdoses and, in the case of domestic violence, strangulation.