What Is CTE?
April 1, 2025 | Winters & Yonker Personal Injury Lawyers | Personal Injury
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a serious brain condition that has gained attention in recent years. You’ve probably heard about its connection to professional athletes (particularly football players), but CTE doesn’t just affect the sports pros. It can impact anyone who has taken repeated hits to the head.
What Causes CTE?
CTE develops over time from repeated brain trauma. Think of it like wear and tear on your brain. Each hit doesn’t seem like a big deal on its own, but over the years, the damage from those impacts adds up. Later on, they trigger changes in brain structure and chemistry.
Inside the brain, there’s a protein called tau. In a healthy brain, tau helps support cell structure. With CTE, abnormal tau builds up in clumps that spread through the brain and kill cells. That tau buildup is what causes brain damage.
The problem is that this can’t be seen on a scan — not right now, anyway. Currently, CTE can only be diagnosed after the person has passed away by examining the brain directly.
Anyone who’s regularly exposed to brain trauma over a long period of time is at the highest risk of developing CTE. This includes athletes in contact sports like football, boxing, hockey, wrestling, and soccer. Military veterans are also at risk because of exposure to blasts and combat injuries.
Early Signs Are Easy To Miss
CTE doesn’t show up right away. Symptoms often start years after the last head injury. The delay makes it hard for people to connect their problems with head trauma from a decade earlier.
The earliest signs tend to involve mood and behavior. People might become more impulsive, anxious, or depressed. They might lose their temper more easily or struggle with making decisions. As the disease progresses, memory issues and confusion set in, and it can look a lot like Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.
CTE is especially tough to pin down because no two people experience it exactly the same way. And since it gets worse over time, the disease spreads across different parts of the brain. What starts as being more irritable than usual can turn into severe emotional and cognitive decline.
In the advanced stages, people might experience:
- Severe memory loss
- Speech problems
- Difficulty swallowing
- Poor judgment
- Loss of motor function
- Suicidal thoughts
And because symptoms can stretch across mental, emotional, and physical areas, the condition affects every part of life, including work, relationships, and independence.
That’s the most heartbreaking part of CTE. People often know something’s wrong but don’t know what’s causing it, and the condition is often misdiagnosed. Their loved ones can see them changing in ways that are hard to understand or explain.
How Is CTE Diagnosed?
Right now, doctors can’t definitively diagnose CTE while a patient is alive. Doctors can rule out other conditions and make an educated guess based on symptoms and health history, but they can’t be certain.
The only way to confirm CTE is through a brain autopsy after the person passes away. That’s how most of what we know about the condition has been discovered — by studying the brains of former athletes and soldiers who donated their bodies to science.
Researchers are working on ways to diagnose it in living patients, but until that changes, patients and their families can be left in a tough spot.
CTE Can Affect Anyone
CTE came into the spotlight after the movie “Concussion” came out in 2015. Though the movie brought awareness to the condition, it also led to its general association with NFL players, and that’s not the whole story. Plenty of people with no connection to professional sports suffer from it.
High school and college athletes are certainly at risk, but so are people who’ve had multiple car accidents or repeated falls. Anyone exposed to long-term head trauma, no matter the source, could be affected. CTE is not rare. What’s rare is how often it’s properly recognized and understood.
This issue hits close to home in Tampa, with its active sports communities and military connections. Whether it’s youth football, martial arts, or serving in the armed forces, there are plenty of ways a person can suffer repeated head trauma.
What Science Is Still Figuring Out
There’s still plenty that researchers don’t know about CTE. Not everyone who experiences repeated head trauma gets it, and scientists are trying to figure out why.
Some theories suggest that genetics might play a role. Others think the age when someone first experiences head trauma matters, as well as the time between injuries. There’s even research into whether certain types of impacts are more dangerous than others.
What is clear is that there’s no cure. No treatment can reverse the damage once it’s been done. That makes awareness all the more important, particularly recognizing the signs early and understanding the risks. Knowing what CTE looks like and how it develops is important to navigating the road ahead.
Living With CTE
People with suspected CTE often struggle with doubt and confusion. Because the disease is still being studied, many feel isolated. Their behavior changes, memory lapses, and outbursts are misunderstood and dismissed. Their families can be just as overwhelmed and not know how to help.
Living with CTE is a deeply personal and emotional challenge, and it often affects people in the prime of their lives, long after they’ve stopped playing sports or serving in combat zones. Even without a clear path forward, understanding what is known about the condition can make a huge difference in how people cope.
Recognizing the Full Impact of Repeated Head Injuries
For those dealing with suspected CTE, the legal system can be a place to seek answers and responsibility. Holding the right people accountable depends on knowing when and how the injuries occurred and understanding the long-term consequences. The key is building a clear timeline and connecting it to the history of trauma.
Contact a Tampa Personal Injury Lawyer from Winters & Yonker Personal Injury Lawyers for Help Today
For more information, please contact Winters & Yonker Personal Injury Lawyers to schedule a free consultation with a personal injury lawyer in Tampa today. We have five convenient locations in Florida, including Tampa, Clearwater, St. Petersburg, New Port Richey, and Lakeland.
We proudly serve Hillsborough County, Pinellas County, Pasco County, Polk County, and its surrounding areas:
Winters & Yonker Personal Injury Lawyers – Tampa Office
601 W Swann Ave, Tampa, FL 33606
(813) 223-6200
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(727) 493-4418
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111 2nd Ave NE Suite 350, St. Petersburg, FL 33701
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Winters & Yonker Personal Injury Lawyers – New Port Richey Office
5006 Trouble Creek Rd Unit #200, Port Richey, FL 34652
(727) 910-5060
Winters & Yonker Personal Injury Lawyers – Lakeland Office
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(863) 251-6196
