Whiplash Injury is More Than Neck Pain

Whiplash Injury is More Than Neck Pain

When representing clients that have been injured as a result of a whiplash type injury, eliciting a proper history is critically important. Looking into every aspect of the patient’s condition and documenting the injuries properly is often overlooked or incomplete. Hincapié, Cassidy, Côté, Carroll and Guzmán (2010) conducted a population based study of the location of pain after a traffic injury. They stated, “Pain after traffic injury is most commonly reported in multiple body areas; isolated neck pain is extremely rare” (Hincapié et al., 2010, p. 434).

As the time from injury progresses, there are many injuries that get overlooked in favor of the more obvious. This fact was highlighted with the authors stating, “Only 0.4% of respondents reported posterior neck pain only” (Hincapié et al., 2010, p. 434). This concept has been visualized by astute clinicians that understand the mechanisms of injury in trauma patients. However, there have not been any studies prior to this one that investigated such occurrences. The authors go on to state, “Our results suggest that conceptualizing pain after traffic injury as primarily neck pain may be misdirected” (Hincapié et al., 2010, p. 437).

When injury victims are being evaluated, it is important that the examining doctor be aware of this very important research. Staying up to date with newly published research related to trauma is an important aspect to properly caring for these clients. Having a detailed conversation and properly documenting injury sites should be norm and not the exception.

ABOUT US

Spine & Injury Centers of San Antonio is a local network of 5 chiropractic offices. As a group, we are raising the standard of care for injured patients and their families.

If you have recently been in a car accident, or had a personal injury, sports injury, or exercise injury, and are experiencing back pain, neck pain, knee pain, whiplash, headaches, leg pain, etc, our San Antonio injury chiropractors can help!

Our goal is to get you back to living a pain-free life as quickly as possible.

Click here to find a San Antonio chiropractor near me.

Reference:

Hincapié, C. A., Cassidy, J. D., Côté, P., Carroll, L. J., & Guzmán, J. (2010). Whiplash injury is more than neck pain: A population-based study of pain localization after traffic injury. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 52(4), 434-440.