Did you know that 20-50% of people with whiplash struggle with neck pain and other symptoms for a year or longer?
You can lower your risk of prolonged problems and get relief from your pain by scheduling an assessment at Florida Pain Medicine.
Their experienced team provides comprehensive whiplash care. Their holistic approach includes focusing on pain relief using advanced therapies like regenerative and interventional medicine.
Whiplash is called an acceleration-deceleration injury, which highlights that it occurs when a sudden impact or movement forces your neck to snap back and forth (or side to side). As the whiplash occurs, the neck’s tissues are forced beyond their normal range of motion.
A mild whiplash pulls the tendons, ligaments, and muscles, causing sprains and strains. A moderate injury may partly or entirely tear tissues.
A severe injury can damage the discs and vertebrae. Whether mild or severe, whiplash can harm the spinal nerves and cause nerve inflammation.
The forceful impact that throws your neck back and forth does the same to your head. As the head suddenly moves, the brain hits the skull, potentially causing a concussion.
Prompt treatment is essential even if you have a mild whiplash. Here are four reasons why it makes a difference:
The sooner you start treatment, the better your chances of healing, preventing the condition from worsening, and avoiding chronic symptoms, such as:
A severe injury or concussion may cause changes in vision, difficulty concentrating, insomnia, and memory problems.
A mild whiplash can cause intense pain, which may hide the presence of a severe injury like torn tissues or a concussion.
Because of the pain and stiffness, especially shooting pain every time you move your head or neck, many people decide to rest for a few days. Unfortunately, if you rest the neck, the tissues tighten and the muscles weaken, prolonging the pain.
Whiplash treatment typically includes gentle stretching and gradually increasing movement. However, pain makes it hard (or impossible) to engage in physical therapy. We can help by relieving your pain.
No one should go through their days with pain caused by a whiplash injury. We develop personalized treatment that may include medication management, regenerative medicine, and interventional treatments.
These are a few examples of treatments we frequently use to ease whiplash pain:
An epidural steroid injection relieves pain if you have inflamed spinal nerves. We inject a steroid and local anesthetic into the space surrounding the spinal cord, placing the medication next to the damaged nerve. Your pain improves as the steroid reduces nerve inflammation.
A nerve block is an injection delivering a local anesthetic to a carefully targeted nerve. Your pain decreases as the drug stops pain signals from traveling to the brain.
We can block several different nerves to relieve whiplash pain, depending on which one is transmitting the pain messages. Your pain may improve for a few days, weeks, or months. Or, you may not get substantial pain relief. (Each person responds differently.)
If your nerve block is successful, we can target the same nerve with a long-lasting interventional therapy like radiofrequency ablation.
To perform radiofrequency ablation, we insert a needle-like device and use it to send radiofrequency energy into the nerve. The heat creates a wound that blocks pain signals.
We specialize in regenerative treatments such as platelet-rich plasma (PRP) and stem cell injections. We produce PRP from a sample of your blood and harvest stem cells from bone marrow or body fat.
The concentrated platelets in PRP trigger healing, reduce inflammation, and support stem cell activity. Adult stem cells regenerate all the new tissues needed to heal your neck.
Whiplashes frequently occur during auto accidents and athletic activities. However, you can develop a whiplash injury from a fall and riding a roller coaster.
No matter what causes the whiplash, don’t wait to seek treatment. Call the nearest Florida Pain Medicine office, or request an appointment online as soon as possible after sustaining a whiplash injury.
