Accident and Injury Chiropractic treats many of the most common injuries suffered by motor vehicle crash victims. This includes:
Back Injuries
Our spines were not designed to handle heavy impact. Thus, back injuries are a common result of car crashes. Back injuries can be serious, but they may be delayed in showing up, so it’s wise to get your back checked out immediately if you there’s a chance you’ve sustained a back injury in a wreck. Back pain from a wreck can start small and grow to debilitating levels, and without treatment it may become chronic.
Neck Injuries and Whiplash
Whiplash is the common name for muscle, ligament and tendon injury to the neck from a car crash. Whiplash occurs when the head abruptly jerks forward or backward, and the neck moves outside its normal range of motion. Because it’s a soft-tissue injury, it may not be as noticeable as other injuries immediately after a crash. As a matter of fact, symptoms of whiplash may take as much as 24 hours to develop. Whiplash can occur at speeds as low as 15 mph—even if you’re wearing a seatbelt. Severe whiplash can result in nerve damage. Severe disk injury and cervical dislocation can also result from a motor vehicle crash.
Knee Injuries
Believe it or not, knee injuries are one of the most common injuries caused by car wrecks. When you’re in a car wreck, your knee can smash into many parts of the car in front of and on the side of you resulting in bone and soft tissue damage. Your knee can also twist and turn abruptly resulting in meniscus or cartilage impairment. Like other injuries, untreated knee injuries can lead to chronic pain.
Foot and Ankle Injuries
Don’t ignore ankle pain after a car wreck. It’s common for people anticipating a wreck to brace themselves with their feet which can force the foot and ankle to move in ways in which they were never intended to move. This can result in bone, ligament, and tendon damage. Right ankle injuries are more common than left ankle injuries because drivers tend to push down hard on the brakes when involved in a crash. If ankle and foot injuries aren’t addressed immediately, it can lead to long-term pain issues. Such injuries can also cause other problems as you compensate for them by changing how you walk and stand.
Shoulder Injuries
If you brace yourself with your hands against the steering wheel or dashboard in a crash, your shoulders can lock in position and experience extreme impact from the collision. A shoulder injury may lead to stiffness, soreness, tingling, and pain.
Even if an injury does not seem that bad, don’t assume it will go away on its own. Proper treatment can go a long way to protect you from long-term complications.
Wrist and Hand Injuries
Distal radius injuries are very common in car accidents because victims use their hands to brace themselves during impact straining muscles, ligaments and tendons. As with other injuries from wrecks, the pain may not show up for hours or even days. It can take months to recover from hand and wrist injuries, so don’t delay diagnosis and treatment.
