One of the most common car accident injuries is known as whiplash. This injury happens often with rear-end collisions and fender-benders. The force of impact when another vehicle collides with yours can cause your head and neck to snap forward and backward violently, causing a whiplash injury. While your seat belt helps prevent you from serious injuries like being ejected from the vehicle during a crash, it can’t prevent you from getting injured altogether. Your head and neck are more vulnerable to injury in a car accident. If you were recently in a car accident and have neck pain and symptoms like blurry vision, then visit an accident doctor near you to find out if you have whiplash.
Common Symptoms of Whiplash
The most common symptoms of whiplash after a car accident include neck pain and tenderness. When your head and neck are flung forward and backward violently during the accident, it can cause the muscles and tendons that support your neck to stretch and strain. This can cause pain and discomfort that may feel like soreness and stiffness. As the pain and stiffness set in with a whiplash injury, you may find it uncomfortable or difficult to turn your head from side to side or up and down. A whiplash injury can also cause other symptoms like headaches, dizziness, and blurry vision. Your spine, muscles, and tendons in the neck can all become strained and negatively affected by a whiplash injury, which causes these uncomfortable symptoms.
Delayed Symptoms and Whiplash
Symptoms of whiplash don’t always appear right away. In fact, you might not even start to recognize pain and discomfort for a few hours or even days after the car accident. The shock and stress of getting into a car accident can prevent you from recognizing you are hurt right away. Adrenaline courses through your body during stressful situations like a car accident to help you stay safe and alert, but it can also prevent you from feeling pain right away. Sore, stiff muscles can take a while to appear, which means you might experience a delay in whiplash symptoms. It is possible to develop symptoms gradually in the hours and days after a car accident.
Diagnosing Whiplash After a Car Accident
Visit an accident doctor no matter what type of car accident you were in. Even a minor car accident can cause a serious injury, so you want to get checked out by a medical professional as soon as possible. There isn’t one specific test doctors use to determine if you have suffered a whiplash injury. In order to diagnose whiplash, your car accident doctor will want to hear about how the car accident happened and what symptoms you have been experiencing since your initial appointment. Your car accident doctor may also use diagnostic imaging tools like X-rays or CT scans to get a clearer picture of your head and neck. These tools can help diagnose a whiplash injury and also rule out other potential injuries, like fractures or internal bleeding.
Treatment Options for Whiplash
Most treatment options for whiplash are minimally invasive and involve you taking time to rest while any swelling and inflammation go down. Applying ice to your neck and the back of your head can also help provide a soothing, numbing effect that helps manage the pain. You may also take over-the-counter pain medications that have anti-inflammatory properties to help manage any swelling. Talk to your car accident doctor about additional treatment options for your whiplash pain, including gentle stretches and exercises to help you regain your range of motion in your neck. These can also help you to regain strength and stability in your neck muscles and tendons as they heal from the whiplash injury. If you have blurry vision, then your doctor will recommend rest after the accident and resolve any inflammation and misalignments in the spine that may be causing your symptoms.
Recovering from Whiplash After a Car Accident
A whiplash injury may take days or weeks to heal from, depending on the severity of your symptoms. Make time to rest and allow your body to heal while you work through a treatment plan with a trusted car accident doctor. Visit The Accident Doctors to find a car accident doctor near you and get the care you need to fully recover from a whiplash injury.
