We should preface with a disclaimer: if you’re experiencing any pain after a car accident, you should go to the hospital and contact a lawyer as soon as you can. Car accidents are moments of high stress, and the resulting shock can make a severe injury feel much less severe at the moment. If you get hurt in a car accident, especially one occurring at high speeds, do not seek chiropractic help until you know for sure that they are not life-threatening injuries.
With that being said, a common trait of car accident injuries is that they tend to linger. Even less severe outcomes such as whiplash can leave you disoriented for months. We’re here to tell you about some commonly-seen critical car accident injuries, as well as their lingering effects on the body and the treatments you can expect to face.
Head and Neck Injuries
We’ll be lumping these together due to the fact that they’re likely to occur in tandem. Even with current safety standards, it’s still incredibly common to see head and neck injuries in car crashes. This is because restraining the head and neck also makes safe driving impossible with our current technology. After all, if your head is restrained, how are you going to check your vehicle’s blind spots? Unfortunately, this lack of restraint means that the head and neck are prone to being whipped around during a car accident, which will inevitably lead to injury.
Head Injuries
Head injuries are the most common type of injuries sustained in vehicular accidents, and they can have some of the most severe consequences. In the best-case scenario, you may get a few cuts and scrapes, maybe a mild headache from slamming into the airbag. Worst case, you may get a brain bleed. Brain bleeds can occur for a variety of reasons, but car accidents tend to cause them through blunt force trauma. Brain bleeds are life-threatening injuries and require immediate hospitalization as they can lead to death if not given immediate treatment. Symptoms can vary, but they often present similarly to a stroke or concussion: vision changes, weakness on one side of the body, slurred speech, lethargy, confusion, seizures, and loss of consciousness, among other things.
Long-term effects of a severe head injury—assuming you don’t just end up in a coma or vegetative state—could include permanent brain damage, cognitive decline, loss of motor functions, chronic headaches, and altered behavior. You may need physical, occupational, or speech therapy to regain full functionality after an injury such as this.
Neck Injuries
Neck injuries are second in line behind head injuries for the title of “most common life-threatening injuries from car accidents.” Unsurprising, as they are directly connected. On the minor end, you may end up with whiplash, especially if you’ve been rear-ended. In fact, 90% of whiplash-related injuries are a result of rear-end auto collisions. However, you could also end up with a neck fracture or even a cervical spinal cord injury. If the latter of the two doesn’t kill you instantly, it could potentially leave you permanently paralyzed.
Depending on the severity and type of the neck injury, long-term effects could range from a whiplash-associated disorder (WAD), chronic pain, limited mobility, and, as mentioned previously, paralysis. Physical therapy and spinal adjustment may help alleviate these often-debilitating effects.
Fractures of the Extremities
Breaking an arm or a leg may not seem so bad compared to the grievous injuries discussed previously. After all, they’re quite common as far as hospital-worthy injuries go, and many a child has done so at least once in their life, to the point where the tradition of signing the cast is recognized silently by many K-12 students. However, not only can a fractured bone potentially puncture a nerve or artery if you happen to be unlucky enough, but the elderly may face shortened lifespans due to these injuries. In one study, it was observed that elderly people who couldn’t recover well enough from a fracture had higher mortality rates in the following year.
Bone fractures typically have no long-term effects. However, as you age, the chances for long-term complications to arise increase. Long-term effects associated with bone fractures include nerve damage, decreased strength, chronic pain, and joint stiffness. Once the bone heals, regular exercise of the area to strengthen the surrounding muscle could help alleviate the pain and stiffness.
Manual Therapy
Fortunately, when it comes to the long-lasting effects of car accident injuries, our team of chiropractic professionals at AICA Atlanta may be able to help. Manual therapy has been shown to greatly improve certain joint conditions, especially in conjunction with physical therapy. Not only that but cervical spine stiffness has also been shown to greatly benefit from manual therapy.
As with all manners of professional care, it’s best to speak to a professional to see which care options are best suited to your specific injuries. Our professionals at AICA Atlanta will be more than happy to answer any questions you may have about your particular injuries and hopefully get you on the path to better health.
