Should I see a chiropractor after an auto accident
Motor vehicle accidents can cause much more than just bumps, bruises, cuts, and broken bones. Your muscles, soft tissues, and joints can also be damaged. It’s important to take those things seriously as well.
Whiplash is one of the most common injuries sustained during car accidents—and often one of the hardest to treat. Nearly 300,000 whiplash injuries occur each year, many at low speeds. It takes only a 2.5 mile-per-hour change in speed to injure the neck.
Although half of all whiplash injuries are the result of rear collisions, they can occur from an impact in any direction. Frontal crashes account for 30 percent of motor vehicle neck injuries.
When a part of the body is whipped back and then forward beyond its normal limits, micro-tears can develop in the surrounding ligaments. Yet many accident victims don’t notice any pain at first. It’s not until the micro-tears start to swell that the symptoms set in, including:
- Blurred vision
- Neck pain
- Headaches
- Dizziness
- Shoulder pain
- Reduced range of motion in the neck
- Arm pain
- Neck stiffness
- Low back pain
Soft-tissue injuries like whiplash can take a long time to heal. One study found that more than 70 percent of people who visited the emergency room after a car accident were still in pain six weeks later. Other researchers have noted that nearly half of whiplash sufferers continue to experience symptoms three months later, while 25 percent remain symptomatic for six months.
Without proper treatment, some injuries can continue to cause pain for years. Restoring and maintaining the range of motion of your muscles and spinal joints as your body heals is important to your recovery and your future movement and function.
How We Can Help
If necessary, we’ll send you for imaging to rule out more immediately serious conditions.
Starting with an in-depth examination, we’ll determine the cause of your pain and related movement impairment and dysfunction.
We have many very comfortable soft tissue and joint techniques to decrease your pain and improve your range of motion.
As your symptoms begin to subside, it’s important to strengthen the damaged and surrounding areas to provide support to the muscles, ligaments, and joints. We’ll provide you with safe and comfortable exercise progressions to feel better and have much more lasting results.
Insurance
Auto-accident policies usually include 100% coverage for medical expenses (which includes treatment from a chiropractor).
If you have questions about coverage, call us at (319) 351-9460 or email us at info@www.iachiropractic.com