Whiplash is the most common type of injury sustained in a car accident. After consulting your doctor, contact Frenkel and Frenkel, your experienced whiplash car wreck lawyers. Frenkel & Frenkel will defend you against negligent drivers and work to get full compensation for your injuries. Contact a medical professional to learn what your medical options are for whiplash and after you’ve been in a car wreck.
What’s Causing Your Pain?
Whiplash injuries are complicated due to an unpredictable combination of factors relating to the spinal cord, nervous system, muscle joints, and connective tissue. As a result, there are many different injuries that could affect a person who has suffered a whiplash injury. As an experienced law firm fighting for fair compensation of car accident victims, we often see a large impact in medical expenses due to the unforeseen nature of whiplash and its long term effects. Some injuries take days and others weeks to flare up and the effects of one pain can reveal another.
According to Spine.org, “Facet joint pain is the most common cause of chronic neck pain after a car accident. It may occur alone or along with disc pain. Facet joint pain is usually located to the right or left of the center back of the neck. The area might be tender to the touch, and facet pain may be mistaken for muscle pain. A patient cannot tell if a facet joint hurts by how it looks on an X-ray image or MRI scan. The only way to tell if the joint is a cause of pain is to perform an injection called “medial branch block (MBB)”. This is just a small example of how whiplash can be hard to diagnose and need significant medical attention.
Another cause of chronic neck pain is disc injury whether due to being torn in a whiplash injury according to Spine.org. While it typically heals on its own, in some cases, it doesn’t and gets ‘weaker and hurts when stressed during normal activities”.
How to Treat Whiplash
According to the US National Library of Medicine, “Whiplash is the most common injury associated with motor vehicle accidents, affecting up to 83% of patients involved in collisions, and is a common cause of chronic disability” It is concerning to know that pain or restricted movement due to a car accident and a resulting whiplash injury affects some for the rest of their lives. To effectively treat whiplash, it’s important to get the help of a health professional that’s specifically trained to work with these types of injuries.
Medical expenses may include chiropractic care. Chiropractic care utilizes the manual manipulation of the spine to try and restore both the normal movement and the normal position of the spinal vertebrae.
Another form of medical rehabilitation could revolve around soft tissue. Soft tissues can include anything that’s not bone; muscles, ligaments, tendons, nerves, and spinal discs. According to Integrative Healthcare, “Most therapists agree that the sooner massage therapy is received, the quicker the person heals and the less likely they are to develop chronic neck pain. In general, any massage that relaxes the affected muscles will help relieve the pain and discomfort of whiplash.” The three that are particularly therapeutic are myofascial release, static compression, and deep tissue massage.
Outside of the effort put in during the therapy sessions recommended by your doctor, taking care of oneself at home and at work will help you not re-aggravate an injury and speed up the recovery process. Prolonged rest can actually slow recovery and increase the symptoms of whiplash, according to BC Medical Journal. It is helpful to avoid ‘sudden or jerky stressful movement’ and take breaks or brief rest but not to have long periods of completely immobile rest. It is not uncommon for the pain to be the last thing to go away, as a result, it is important to look for increased function initially in the recovery process. In some of the more severe cases of whiplash, more extensive medical care may be needed including injection therapy and surgery. Consider not just your medical doctor carefully, but a car accident law firm who will be in your corner to get you the compensation for your injuries that you deserve.
Contact Your Whiplash Compensation Lawyers Today!
If you’ve suffered a whiplash injury in the Dallas Metroplex, schedule a free consultation with our whiplash car wreck lawyers at Frenkel & Frenkel at 1-800-834-0000.
