Even if you were involved in a minor fender bender, studies have proven you could suffer from a severe injury that isn't easily noticeable. Research has shown that you can be severely injured and only feel a little or no pain after the accident. Your doctor can easily miss this and mistake your pain for something completely different. That doesn't mean you should skip the ER.
Injuries from motor vehicle accidents are often missed by "first line" practitioners, such as those at the emergency room. There are several reasons for this. First of all, the emergency room doctors and nurses are there to make sure you don't have a serious, life threatening injury. Related to a car wreck, their main concern is that you don't have something like a bone fracture, internal bleeded, laceration, and injuries of that sort. However, most injuries related to a car wreck are "soft tissue" injuries. Things like sprains, strains, vertebral misalignments and pinched nerves. These injuries are often not taken seriously by ER practitioners b/c they are not always immediately evident after the accident. There is a phenomenon called "delay onset muscle sorenss" which means that you will have more pain during the days AFTER the accident. In addition, many accident sufferers have pain that is masked by the adrenaline rush that occurs immediately after the accident. This is why car accident injuries are often called "hidden injuries".
"Hidden injuries" are sneaky, potentially debilitating, and will strike millions of Americans this year.
See, after any accident, it's advisable to visit the emergency room to make sure you don't suffer from any life-threatening injuries like broken bones, a punctured lung, or internal bleeding. This is what emergency room doctors specialize in.
But the problem is that as long as there's no immediate threat to your life, the emergency room physician is likely to send you along on your way with pain medication to mask the pain. And here's the problem with only taking pain medication after your accident: When you only take pain relief and/or anti-inflammatory medication, scar tissue and adhesions can form, limiting the proper motion needed for healthy nerve and blood flow. Scar tissue is also a sub-standard tissue that can turn into its own source of pain - causing a number of chronic pains, symptoms and syndromes. Some examples of the chronic problems your injury can turn into are migraine headaches, chronic pain and fibroymyalgia.
One of the reasons these injuries are missed is that most doctors don't have the training to detect soft tissue injuries...they over-rely on vital signs, x-rays, and the pain described by the patient. Soft tissue injuries are NOT visible on x-ray. Since many doctors can't detect your injury, they make the wrong diagnosis about what's wrong with you. So any treatments you get based on this diagnosis will do practically nothing for you!
The treatment of choice for medical doctors, like your family doctor, is to use drugs to cover up your symptoms (in your case, the biggest symptom is pain) so you don't feel injured anymore. This form of treatment only gives you the illusion that you're okay, when in fact you can be seriously injured.
If you were in a car wreck and have any of the following symptoms, you should be evaluated by your chiropractor:
• Muscle Stiffness
• Spasms
• Neck Pain
• Headaches
• Numbness And Tingling
• Mid-Back Pain
• Low Back Pain
• Difficulty Sleeping
• Irritability
• Memory Loss
• Fatigue
The worst thing you can do is ignore your pain with the hope that it will go away on its own. Scar tissue begins to form soon after an accident, and the more scar tissue that forms, the harder it will be to treat your condition.
Dr. Daniel Boggs
(304)255-4325
