Long-Term Effects of a Whiplash Neck Injury

Have you or a loved one recently been in a car crash? Well, we are sorry to hear that! A car accident is a major and quite scary incident that can happen in anyone’s life at the snap of a finger. Unfortunately, car accidents are all too common nowadays. Statistics reveal that in the United States alone, over 7.2 million car accidents occurred to passenger cars in 2016. And yet another 5 million light trucks were involved in car crashes that same year! If you have recently been involved in a car accident, then it is quite possible that you might be suffering from a whiplash neck injury. Even more surprisingly, it is quite possible that you may not immediately feel the effects of whiplash if you are suffering from it. However, even if you don’t feel whiplash immediately, you still need to get checked by a medical professional as soon as possible to make sure it doesn’t get worse. Let’s take a closer look at the long-term effects of whiplash neck injury below:

What is Whiplash and Can It Cause Long-term Symptoms?

A whiplash neck injury is an injury that occurs in the soft tissues of the neck when the head suffers a rapid and severe jolt forward and/or backward. These injuries occur very commonly in car accidents or any other incidents that cause a forceful, sudden acceleration or deceleration of the head and neck. Whiplash neck injuries can vary quite a bit in severity from quite mild to extremely severe. However, no matter the extent of the severity, all whiplash injuries can progress and become much more debilitating (and expensive) if not properly diagnosed and treated by a medical professional or chiropractor.

Whiplash Symptoms and Diagnosis

Many whiplash injuries have quite a slow onset. Therefore, this often makes them quite difficult to diagnose by yourself without real medical attention from a qualified professional.  Sometimes, someone who gets a whiplash injury will not feel any effects of their damage for hours, days or even weeks after the car accident that caused it. Even in extremely serious whiplash cases, it may take over 12 hours before any painful symptoms are felt. Whiplash symptoms are even more tricky to self-diagnose because they can even occur in supposedly “trivial” car accidents where the cars were going less than 10 miles per hour and no damage to the cars occurred. However, this doesn’t mean that your body or neck didn’t get damaged as well!

As a result of the usual slow onset of symptoms from whiplash injuries, many people will avoid seeking the proper medical attention because they are either hoping their pain will just go away naturally or because they haven’t yet linked their neck pain with their recent car accident. This is why if you have been in a car crash, you have to make sure that you get properly checked as soon as possible for a whiplash neck injury so that it doesn’t become more severe and debilitating. Otherwise, you run the risk of suffering from long-term effects of a whiplash neck injury (cervical spinal stenosis) that include:

• Pain and/or stiffness in the neck
• Upper and/or lower back pain
• Shoulder pain
• Jaw pain
• Migraines or severe headaches
• Weakness or numbness in the limbs or extremities
• Dizzy spells
• Difficulty sleeping
• Ringing noises in either or both ears
• Blurry vision
• Memory or mental focus/concentration issues
• Consistent irritability

If you or a loved one are suffering from any of these long-term effects of whiplash or have recently been in a car accident, please contact us at FIX24 Joint Biomechanics immediately. It would be a pleasure to help you heal properly.