Patient Resources
How soon after a car accident should I see my chiropractor?
The sooner a victim of a car accident seeks chiropractic care, the better. However, it's also never too late.
An injury from a car accident may create new areas of subluxation or aggravate previously subluxated vertebrae. Anyone can be subjected to whiplash, even in a low-force auto impact at speeds as low as 5-10 km/h. At any speed, injuries associated with whiplash can result from the head being pushed or jerked beyond its normal range of motion. Severe cases of whiplash commonly involve those in rear-end auto collisions in which the heads of those in the front car are suddenly snapped back and forth by the impact. It is more accurately called cervical acceleration/deceleration (CAD) trauma or syndrome, which describes the rapid movements that can injure the vertebrae of the neck and the muscles and ligaments that support them. Whiplash most commonly causes serious and lingering neck pain, but there may also be back pain, neck pain, and dizziness. Inasmuchas bruising of the brain can sometimes occur in auto accidents and similarly severe causes of whiplash, some victims have experienced blurred vision, ringing in the ears, nausea and numbness.
After an initial examination by a chiropractor, the patient may certainly be advised to manage swelling, pain, and superficial injuries outside the office. Other cases may require the patient to seek care from other health care practitioners, upon the chiropractor's recommendation. In any event, vertebral subluxations brought on by the trauma should be corrected with chiropractic care, to preserve the optimal functioning of the spine and nervous system in the immediate and long-term future. Vertebrae may subluxate in a number of different ways, depending on the speed and direction of the accident, and the positioning of the accident victim in the automobile.
An article published in the Journal of Orthopedic Medicine in 1999 pointed out the superiority of chiropractic care for patients suffering from long term whiplash. The authors of the article noted that a previous study had shown that 26 of 28 patients, or 93 percent, of patients with chronic whiplash benefited from chiropractic care. In the authors own study, they interviewed 100 consecutive chiropractic referrals of patients with chronic whiplash. Their results also showed that of the 93 patients who remained in the study, 69 of them, or 74 percent, found improvement.
Further studies have indicated that accident victims, whose injuries are not cared for effectively, may be subject to autonomic nervous system dysfunction years later. This research suggests that patients who might feel "symptom-free" following the trauma are still subluxated, and require proper management of their injuries.
What can chiropractic do?
The sudden accident that caused the whiplash in the first place may fade into memory, but the physical and psychological damage of whiplash can become chronic, eroding a victim's quality of life. Chiropractic techniques and chiropractors' skills are particularly well-suited to correcting structural problems and other debilitating effects of whiplash because they can:
- restore movement lost after the accident
- overcome muscle weakness and enhance muscle tone
- speed recovery, and
- diminish chronic symptoms that can persist or recur over many years.
Repeated and effective chiropractic adjustments have proved successful for many thousands of patients. Chiropractic can, in many cases, significantly reduce patients' distress and allow them to return to their normal activities rather than seeing themselves as invalids -- as so many whiplash victims do long after their accident.
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