
Health Essential - Car Accident Injuries
Hey there, Dr. James Fedich here at Village Family Clinic. I want to tell you a little bit about car accidents today. I actually got into chiropractic because of a car accident. When I was 13 years old, I was hit really hard from the side in a wreck. I couldn’t play basketball or any sports anymore, and a chiropractor got me back on track.
So let me tell you a little bit about car accidents. A lot of times in car accidents, we’re hit with quite a lot of force. It’s not actually the speed of the vehicle, but the weight of it. That whole weight—4,000 or 5,000 pounds—gets transferred through your body, and most of it ends up impacting the spine.
One of the more common injuries people talk about is whiplash. The technical name for that is a flexion-extension injury. Here’s our spine from the side: your neck has a normal curve, with your skull here and your throat here. In a flexion-extension injury, when we get hit, the neck goes forward, then comes back, and often strikes the seat. That’s a common whiplash injury.
What happens is it tears the muscles in the back of the neck, causing pain, spasms, headaches, and more. It’s actually a little more complex, because a lot of the force travels through the thoracic, or middle back, spine. That’s called an S-shaped injury. The force pushes upward as well as forward, so the back jerks in both directions, then the neck follows by going forward and backward.
We also often see lumbar disc injuries and lower back issues. The same force that affects the upper back and neck can shear through the low back, damaging discs and nerves.
Now, in New Jersey, it’s a no-fault state, which means it doesn’t matter who caused the accident. If you’ve been hurt in a car accident, auto insurance will typically cover 100% of your chiropractic care. So whether it was your fault or someone else’s, the insurance company will handle it and sort out the details later.
If you or someone you know has been injured in a car accident, it’s very important to get these problems treated right away. If you don’t take care of soft tissue or disc injuries when they first occur, scar tissue starts to form, making everything tighter and stiffer until it eventually gets stuck that way.
Muscle fibers are supposed to move smoothly back and forth. But when they tear, they start binding up, forming scar tissue, and pulling everything out of alignment. That’s why it’s so important to get checked.
So if you know someone who’s been in a car accident, make sure their spine is evaluated by a chiropractor—especially one who understands auto insurance claims and has a billing staff that can get you the care you need.
If you or someone you know has been in a car accident, give us a call at (908) 813-8200.