You were in an automobile accident — a car that was going too fast and didn’t brake in time rear-ended you, and your head was rocked back and forth. Now, your neck is in a good deal of pain, and you suspect that you experienced whiplash.
This scenario is one of the most common drivers of whiplash injuries in the United States — and medical researchers estimate that there are north of 1.2 million of these injuries each year.
While whiplash is never good news, especially if you’ve developed some back, neck, and shoulder pain, the one bright spot is that this type of injury is rarely surgical.
The team here at Texas Spine Consultants, which includes Dr. Michael Hennessy, Dr. Chester Donnally, Dr. Heidi Lee, Dr. Andrew Park, and Dr. Robert Viere, focuses on surgical solutions for the spine. While spine surgery may be our specialty, it may surprise you that 90% of the time, neck and back issues can be resolved without surgery, which is certainly mostly true of whiplash.
The average human head weighs about 10-11 pounds, which might not seem all that much until it starts flying around. When something rocks your head back and forth, such as a rear-end car collision, your head accelerates forward and back at great speed, and this sudden and violent movement can stretch the soft tissues in your neck and compress your cervical spine.
We mentioned that car accidents are the most common culprits behind whiplash, but this type of neck injury can also occur due to shaking or anything else that causes your head to jerk forward and back.
As a result of whiplash, you can be left with:
In moderate to severe cases of whiplash, neurological issues like headaches and visual disturbances can develop, as well as cognitive issues.
Please bear in mind that symptoms of whiplash are often delayed, and you may not feel them until the day after your injury. Some people even develop symptoms days or weeks later.
If you recognize any of the symptoms we describe above and you’re worried about whiplash, we urge you to come see us so that we can evaluate the extent of your neck injury.
In most cases, we assess the injury and recommend conservative treatments to start, such as:
If these methods prove ineffective and your symptoms persist, we can get more aggressive with corticosteroid injections to reduce pain and inflammation or a radiofrequency neurotomy to quiet any nerves that are firing off pain signals.
Where surgery for whiplash can come in is usually down the road. If there’s lasting damage in your cervical spine and there are nerve compression issues, we may recommend surgery to decompress the nerves to relieve your pain. This decompression surgery can also address any numbness and tingling you’ve developed in your upper extremities (arms and hands).
Again, it’s not often that whiplash ends with surgery, but if that’s the road you’re on, we assure you that you’re in good hands with our experienced and skilled spine surgery team.
Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, the first step is to come see for an evaluation of your whiplash or neck injury. To get started, simply contact one of our offices in Addison or Plano, Texas, to schedule a consultation with one of our cervical spine experts.
