Headaches and migraine are among the most common problems caused by a car crash. These headaches range from mild to severe and short-lived to chronic and disabling.
If you need relief from head pain, you can turn to the exceptional Florida Pain Medicine team. We specialize in medication management and precisely targeted interventional procedures that ease auto-injury pain even when conservative treatments don’t help.
Headaches commonly develop after a car accident, whether or not you suffer head trauma. You may experience:
Whiplash ranks among the top injuries following a car crash. The impact causes sudden, intense head movement, snapping your neck from front to back or side to side.
The movement pulls the ligaments and muscles. A severe whiplash injury can also damage the spinal vertebrae, discs, and nerves. Damaged and inflamed tissues cause pain and limited movement.
You may have an immediate headache following a whiplash. However, it can also take days for the pain to begin.
Nearly four out of 10 whiplash patients still have headaches a year after the accident. Seeking prompt treatment is essential for healing and pain relief.
Post-traumatic headaches develop in 91% of patients who have a concussion (mild traumatic brain injury).
Concussions occur when your head hits the steering wheel, window, dashboard, headrest, or any area inside the car. You can also develop a concussion due to a whiplash injury as your brain hits the skull.
Nearly half of patients with a concussion develop migraine headaches. However, you could also have tension headaches or a cervicogenic or cluster-like headache.
Without treatment to ease the pain, post-traumatic headaches can lead to disability. More than one-third of patients can’t return to work three months after the car accident because of their headaches.
We’re mentioning cervicogenic headaches because they’re usually a separate type of headache. However, they overlap with other headaches caused by car accidents because they begin with neck injuries.
The primary causes of cervicogenic headaches include:
Cervicogenic headaches cause symptoms such as pain starting in the neck and radiating into the head, one-sided head pain, and pain located behind your eyes.
This headache develops when a whiplash or head injury damages the occipital nerves. These nerves run from your upper neck to the back of your head. If they become pinched or inflamed, they cause headaches.
When the structures in your neck or head are damaged, the injury can trigger migraine or cluster-like headaches.
Migraine causes intense, throbbing pain around one or both temples. Without treatment, a migraine can last for days. You’ll also have symptoms like nausea, vomiting, dizziness, and sensitivity to light and sound.
Cluster headaches are known for causing severe, stabbing pain behind or around one eye. However, the pain may spread throughout your face, head, or neck. The headache begins suddenly and often at night.
As the name suggests, such headaches transpire in clusters. You’ll have multiple daily headaches for weeks, months, or a year. Then they temporarily go into remission.
Managing headaches after a car crash isn’t always as easy as you might expect, especially if the crash was a minor fender-bender with no noticeable injuries.
You may not have head pain at first or ignore it because it’s mild. Even when the headache occurs quickly and causes moderate-to-severe pain, many people wait for it to improve.
However, putting off treatment can lead to complications. The injury can worsen, and your risk of developing chronic, disabling headaches increases.
There are many effective headache treatments beyond over-the-counter pain relievers. Our experienced team may recommend one of today’s advanced medications. Some prescription medicines ease the pain after a headache begins; others reduce or prevent future headaches.
Beyond medication management, we specialize in effective interventional treatments for headaches and migraine, such as:
Request an appointment by calling the nearest Florida Pain Medicine office or using online booking to get help with headaches.
