Just about any car accident lawyer or chiropractor will tell you that soft tissue injuries are the most common injuries that are suffered in a car accident. The injuries can be acute or chronic. Symptoms of an acute soft tissue injury might last 10 days to several months. A chronic injury might result in pain and limit range of motion for a lifetime.
Soft tissue injuries resulting from a car accident often involve strains, sprains, and contusions to muscles, tendons, and ligaments. These types of injuries are caused by sudden trauma, such as a blow to the body, or from sudden acceleration and deceleration.
Document Your Injury
After suffering a soft tissue injury in an accident, you’ll want to seek medical care at an emergency room or doctor’s office right away. By doing so, your injuries will be documented in medical records. That way, there’s an immediate medical record of an injury. Don’t wait too long to seek medical care — If you do, the opposing insurer might argue that you hurt yourself some other way during the time that passed.
The RICE guidelines
After you’ve documented the injury, you might be told to go home and follow the RICE guidelines of care. Those consist of:
- Rest to begin the healing process
- Ice to reduce pain and inflammation
- Compression to control and reduce swelling
- Elevation to reduce pain and any bleeding
The period immediately following a soft tissue injury is the acute inflammatory stage, which is when you want to try to get some control over the injury. Expect the damaged tissue to bleed. You’ll feel the inflammation, and your range of motion at the affected area will be decreased. Ice will help reduce that inflammation.
If you don’t have any significant improvement within 48 hours, make an appointment at your doctor’s office. The next phone call you make after that should be to a local law firm to arrange for a free consultation and case evaluation with a car accident lawyer.
Treating Soft Tissue Injuries
Chiropractic treatment for soft tissue injuries has proven to be invaluable. Medications don’t really contribute to the healing process; rather, they tend to mask the signals that the affected part of the body is trying to transmit to the brain. Following an initial RICE at-home treatment, you might seek additional care through chiropractic services.
Regeneration and Remodeling
Regeneration can last anywhere from a week to six weeks after the injury. Proteins build new tissue during this regeneration time. Passive mobility and pressure treatments at the chiropractor’s office decrease healing time.
During the remodeling phase, your chiropractor will carefully align the damaged tissue in the proper direction. In a serious soft tissue injury case, the remodeling process can take months to reach maximum medical improvement.
Many law firms have made a sustained effort to understand chiropractic education and treatment. It’s a very rigorous course of study, and it certainly has its place in medical science for treating any number of conditions or injuries. Chiropractors have been most accommodating in helping us understand the physiology of soft tissue injuries along with the rehabilitation process.
If you’ve suffered a soft tissue injury as a result of the carelessness and negligence of somebody else, and you’re treating with a chiropractor Rockville MD trusts, don’t hesitate to contact us by email or phone. We’re well aware of how to explain the nature and extent of your soft tissue injuries along with the foundation and necessity of chiropractic treatment to a judge and jury.
Thanks to our friends and contributors from Pain and Arthritis Relief Center for their insight into soft tissue damage after an accident.
