Personal Injury:
Personal injury can be due to a car accident (most common) or other types of accidents like slip and fall. After a car accident, many people will not feel symptoms resulting from the accident. They will not report any complains to the legal enforcement officer present at the scene. Hours or days later symptoms will start to appear and can get worse before getting better. Some insurance will have med-pay that covers some of the medical expenses. Usually the insurance of the party at fault will pay for medical expenses and other expenses incurred due to the car accident including lost wages, disability.
A common injury in car accidents is whiplash injury, also called neck sprain-strain. It usually happens due to sudden movement of the neck, whereby the neck go into flexion or extension movement. Injury can involve any of the structures of the neck including the discs, the muscles, the ligaments and nerves, different bone fractures can happen depending on the movement of the head and the speed of the cars.
As stated above, whiplash symptoms may not show till a day or more after the car accident and can present differently from person to person. The speed of the car, the age of the persons involved, the size of cars and per-existing conditions play major role in the presenting symptoms.
Common presenting symptoms of whiplash:
- Neck pain
- Decreased range of motion of the neck
- Pain in the shoulder
- Mid back pain
- Low back pain
- Chest pain
- Numbness in the upper or lower extremity
- Headaches
- Dizziness
- Ringing in the ears
- blurred vision
- Difficulty concentrating
- Irritability
- Sleep disturbances
- Fatigue