Fort Lauderdale Personal Injury Attorneys > Blog > Auto Accidents > Treating Whiplash Injuries

Treating Whiplash Injuries

As one of the most common injuries with which car accident victims are diagnosed, whiplash afflicts thousands of people every year. Whiplash is also notorious for resulting in chronic pain, especially amongst those who are involved in serious collisions, or who do not seek treatment immediately after their accident. Fortunately, car accident victims can recover damages compensating them for whiplash and their other injuries if they can prove that someone else was at fault for their collision. For help determining whether you can recover damages for your own accident-related injuries, please call our car accident legal team today.

What Causes Whiplash?

Whiplash, as the name suggests, usually involves a person’s head jerking backward and forward in a rapid fashion. This motion is often harmless, but can also cause the muscles and tendons in the neck to stretch and tear, which can result in inflammation, stiffness, and pain. The extent of these symptoms depends on the type of accident in which the injury was sustained, which could include any mishap where a sudden impact forces the head forward or backward. Most whiplash injuries, however, occur during:

Car accidents;
Assaults;
Bicycle or pedestrian accidents;
Motorcycle collisions;
Boating accidents; and
Contact sports.

If you sustained a whiplash injury in one of these kinds of accidents, you could be eligible for damages. Please contact an experienced car accident attorney to learn more about your legal options.

Typical Symptoms

Whiplash is a delayed-symptom injury, which means that many accident victims who suffer extreme trauma to the neck don’t experience those symptoms for days after the accident. For this reason, accident victims who suffer neck trauma are strongly encouraged to seek medical assistance right away, even if they have not yet begun experiencing symptoms. Failing to take this step could make it more difficult to treat the injury, while also making it harder to recover compensation from the at-fault party who caused it. To ensure that this doesn’t happen to you, please keep an eye out for these common whiplash symptoms:

Fatigue;
Dizziness;
Nausea;
Vomiting;
Neck pain and stiffness;
A loss of motion in the neck;
Numbness and tingling in the limbs;
Headaches that start at the base of the skull; and
Tenderness in the upper back, shoulders, and arms.

In extreme cases, whiplash victims can even suffer from a ringing in the ears, mood swings, migraines, blurred vision, and memory problems.

Treating Whiplash

The treatment regimen for whiplash depends on the severity of a person’s injury, but in most cases, injured parties undergo treatment to re-stabilize neck tissue through:

Physical therapy;
Prescription medications;
Neck braces;
Hot and cold therapy;
Acupuncture; and
Therapeutic massage.

Generally, it can take as long as four to six months for a person to heal from a whiplash injury, but it is also not uncommon for injured parties to suffer from pain and restricted range of motion for years after an accident. This in turn, can result in extremely expensive medical bills, making it especially important for whiplash victims to seek compensation from the negligent person who caused their accident.