While some car accident injuries heal with the help of continued medical treatment, some don’t and impair the victim for the rest of their lives. It depends on the severity of the accident. The stronger the impact, the higher the chance you will sustain life-altering injuries. These car accident injuries include soft tissue damage, whiplash, meniscus tears, and herniated discs, among other serious problems.
That’s why car accident victims need chiropractic care. It includes manual adjustments to the musculoskeletal system to ease pain from herniated discs and injured cervix, spinal adjustments to treat sore joints, neck pain, and knee pain, and cold laser therapy to heal and regenerate cells. This way, you can ensure that the right medical experts can look after your well-being after such a traumatic event.
Apart from medical care, you must seek legal support to help you with the issues of compensation depending on the cause of the accident, especially if injuries have altered your life forever. And to keep you posted, we will explore car accident injuries that have long-lasting health effects in this article. Read on to learn about them.
Table of Contents
1. Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
TBI is a head injury from a severe blow that leads to bleeding and terminal brain damage. The long-term effect of TBI is that a person needs 24-7 medical assistance to feed and perform other daily hygiene activities.
2. Whiplash
Whiplash is an injury to the ligaments, muscles, or neck tendons. It occurs when a person’s head is thrust backward and forward at impact during an accident. At first, you may experience neck pain, headaches, and upper and lower back pain. But as the days progress, the pain could increase and become chronic, inhibiting your ability to carry out simple tasks.
3. Fractures and Facial Injuries
Car accidents could break your legs, ribs, wrists, and ankles due to the crash’s impact. Your face could also be injured by broken glass or hit by the car’s windshield, car seat, or window. Surgeries can correct fractures and facial injuries, but the body may not remain the same. The face could have long-lasting scars, while you could also be limping or walking on crutches because maybe one of the legs had to be amputated.
4. Burns
Car accidents could involve fires and explosions. Victims could suffer severe burns that may damage their skin and expose them to infections. Skin grafting and physical therapy are among the corrective remedies. The victim will have scars from the burns that may be permanent throughout their lives. Treatment could also take a while before it heals the skin.
5. Spinal Cord Injuries
Car accidents can also cause spinal cord injuries requiring a spine pain specialist. The injuries are severe and could render the victim partly or completely paralyzed, a condition with problems including breathing, incontinence, and body temperature regulation.
Aside from physical injuries, car accidents can also cause emotional damage to their victims. Below are some of them.
6. Depression
Depression is an emotional injury resulting from feelings of sadness, inability to concentrate, fatigue, and loss of interest in activities you once liked. Wounds from a car accident may completely change your life, so you cannot do things you usually do without struggling, possibly causing you to get depressed.
For example, if your spinal cord gets injured due to an accident and you can’t walk anymore, you have to be in a wheelchair and be pushed around, which could cause depression. The thought that you have to depend on others for most things could be too much for you to handle.
7. Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Post-traumatic stress disorder is characterized by panic, numbness, abnormal fear, a tendency to evade people or places connected to the accident, and helplessness. If not treated, PTSD could worsen, and the victim may commit suicide or resort to drug and substance abuse.
8. Anxiety
Most car accident victims could fear getting into a car again, whether they will completely heal from the injury, and how life will be after the injury—anxiety results in insomnia, panic attacks, weight fluctuation, and other psychiatric problems.
9. Financial Problems
Car accidents could cause injuries whose treatment requires several visits to the hospital, including medicine. It could cause victims to run into financial problems, especially those with low income, which is not enough to cover medical expenses. Those with no insurance cover or savings for emergencies are also affected.
10. Job Loss
Car accidents can cause long-lasting injuries that make you lose your livelihood to a great extent. For instance, spinal cord injuries would make you lose your job because you cannot perform your duties. It results in a loss of income and, in turn, an inability to live everyday life.
Final Thought
You could have your car serviced regularly and observe all the rules on the road but still have an accident and suffer severe injuries. Seek medical attention immediately to treat your injuries with experts, however long it may take. It’s also essential to get counseling to cope with life after long-lasting injuries that change your life completely.