January 3, 2023

What types of vaccine injuries are there?

Vaccine injuries can have disastrous effects on the person who suffers from them, making them dangerous.

If you are a victim of a vaccine injury, you should take actionable steps to set up vaccine injury claims right away to stand a good chance of getting full compensation for the injuries you sustained.

There are several law firms out there that would be more than willing to help you with your case and see to it that you get the vaccine injury compensation you deserve.

This article will look at the different types of vaccine injuries and the damage they can cause to anyone who becomes a victim.

Types of Vaccine Injuries

Several vaccine injuries exist. However, you should be able to identify these vaccine injury types as much as you can, as this will prove helpful when preparing your case.

That said, let us take a look at them below:

Transverse Myelitis

Transverse myelitis is an injury that affects the spinal cord, causing it to swell and leading to excruciating pain for the victim.

This vaccine injury can occur in adults of any age and results in symptoms that include swelling, pain, sensory difficulties, body weakness, and bladder and bowel problems.

The best way to treat this type of vaccine injury is by using intravenous corticosteroid drugs, plasma exchange therapy, intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG), pain medications, and antiviral medications.

Guillain-Barre Syndrome 

Guillain-Barre syndrome is a condition where the immune system attacks the nerves within the body, leading to extreme paralysis in some cases.

This syndrome results from an infection or an immunization. For example, the influenza vaccine is one of its main causes.

While this is a rare disease, about 6,000 people each year still fall victim to it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Common symptoms of this disease include a tingling sensation around the arms and legs, body weakness, difficulty breathing, and difficulty swallowing.

The vaccines responsible for this syndrome include the influenza vaccine, the MMR vaccine, the hepatitis B vaccine, and so on.

Arm and Shoulder Injury

Taking the wrong vaccine injection could cause arm and shoulder injuries. Once this happens, the patient begins to feel a sharp pain around the arms and shoulders and a red swelling around the body surface where the vaccine was injected.

Apart from pains around the shoulders and arms, the patient might experience even worse symptoms such as shoulder bursitis, tendonitis, brachial neuritis, and adhesive capsulitis, among others.

These symptoms can last for long periods, and we can attribute most vaccine injuries of this type to something as simple as the wrong positioning of the needle used in administering the vaccine.

Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy (CIDP)

Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy is an autoimmune disorder that leads to a compromise within the body’s tissues due to the presence of foreign materials within the patient’s immune system.

An immediate symptom that arises as a result of CIDP is weakness and immobility of the hands and legs. Other symptoms may include facial paralysis, low tendon reflexes, and so on.

Some people may experience more severe symptoms, such as facial paralysis, as a result of the vaccine injury, while others may experience the opposite. 

Nonetheless, this vaccine injury can be treated with corticosteroids, immunosuppressant drugs, plasma exchange, and IVIG physiotherapy.

Encephalitis

Encephalitis is a vaccine injury that causes inflammation of the brain due to a bacterial or viral infection. This vaccine injury is more common in children, although it is known to be quite rare.

Generally, any vaccine containing pertussis, mumps, measles, or rubella stands a slight chance of causing encephalitis.

Common symptoms that could occur as a result of encephalitis include muscle weakness, muscle pain, fatigue, seizures, neurological dysfunction, fever, little to no coordination, a low level of consciousness, and so on.

Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis is a vaccine injury that causes the body to stop receiving neural communication from the brain.

This happens when the immune system develops a disorder that causes it to disrupt the nerve fibers that are responsible for brain-body communication.

Possible symptoms include muscle spasms, fatigue, poor eyesight, dizziness, cognitive inability, numbness, difficulty walking, and so on.

Multiple health resources have stated that there is no known cure for multiple sclerosis. However, physical therapy can be quite helpful in managing some of the symptoms faced by individuals suffering from this condition.

Febrile Seizures

A febrile seizure is a vaccine injury that is more common in children. This type of condition arises when a child develops a fever right after taking childhood vaccines.

Usually, the child tends to overcome this seizure with time without the need to take any anti-seizure drugs. 

Vaccines that cause fever may cause seizures in the individual. For example, according to health care providers, the pertussis vaccine, until it was changed and improved, had a significant chance of causing seizures in children. Now, however, that risk has been greatly reduced.

Conclusion

Different vaccines cause vaccine injuries, which are becoming even more common these days, although a no-fault alternative has been put in place to provide victims with insurance.

Should you become a vaccine injury victim, you should apply to the vaccine injury compensation program and stand a chance of getting the national vaccine injury compensation. Alternatively, you could contact a medical malpractice lawyer to assist you in receiving full compensation for your injuries.

At Michael Alan Siddons Law, we have the best health and human services representatives specializing in filing and resolving vaccine injury claims and federal claims.

To get in touch with us, please call us at 610-255-7500. You can also email us at msiddons@siddonslaw.com or visit us at 230 North Monroe Street, Suite A, Media, PA 19063, and we will get in touch with you immediately.

We are open from Mondays to Fridays, 9 a.m.–5 p.m., and closed on Saturdays and Sundays.

You can also send us any questions by filling out the form on the contact page of our website, and we will provide appropriate answers promptly.