Even if you have a mild soft tissue injury, you can experience severe pain. Treating the pain is essential, and not only because you shouldn’t limit your life due to the discomfort.
Easing pain also helps you heal faster and lowers the risk of acute injury pain becoming a chronic pain condition.
If you need help with the pain of a soft tissue injury caused by an auto accident, you can depend on the expertise of our Florida Pain Medicine team. As pain management specialists, we have helped many patients overcome soft tissue injuries using today’s most innovative treatments.
Soft tissue injuries frequently occur during a car accident. The impact forces your body to move, throwing you against the seat belt, steering wheel, dashboard, window, seat in front of you, or an airbag.
Then, your body reverses direction, throwing you against another structure. These sudden, powerful movements pull the soft tissues — muscles, tendons, and ligaments — causing minor to severe damage by forcing them to stretch beyond their natural limit.
You may not realize the extent of a soft tissue injury initially because it takes time for inflammation, pain, and stiffness to develop. The impact may also damage nerves and blood vessels.
The following six soft tissue injuries represent those most often caused by a car accident:
Sprains occur when ligaments are stretched or torn. Articular ligaments are located in joints, connecting bones and stabilizing the joint. You also have peritoneal ligaments, which hold organs in place and connect one organ to another.
Although a car accident can injure any ligament, knee sprains are among the most common. Pain, inflammation, swelling, bruising, and limited movement are visible when the sprain is in a joint. Pulled peritoneal ligaments can cause severe pain, but you won’t see the inflammation and bruising.
Strains affect muscles and tendons, ranging from a mildly stretched muscle or tendon to a complete rupture. Strains cause similar symptoms as sprains.
These soft tissues are essential for movement. Tendons attach muscles to bones. As the muscles contract, the tendon pulls on the bone, and the joint moves.
Bruises develop when your skin takes a direct blow from a blunt object. The force injures the connective tissues below the surface but doesn’t break the skin. Blood accumulating around the injury causes the discoloration.
Though skin contusions are seldom serious, a car accident can also cause muscle contusions, resulting in muscle damage and bleeding in the muscle fibers.
Muscle contusions are usually quite painful. You may also have fluid buildup, swelling, and muscle weakness.
During a whiplash, your neck rapidly moves in one direction. Then, it quickly snaps back in the other direction, like cracking a whip. In medical terms, a whiplash is a sprain and/or strain because the movement pulls the ligaments, tendons, and muscles in your neck and shoulder.
Though the car's speed affects the severity of a whiplash, the vehicle doesn’t need to be going fast. A whiplash can occur at speeds as low as 5-10 miles per hour.
A whiplash causes:
Whiplash injuries are well-known for having delayed symptoms. You may not feel the full extent of the neck pain for hours or days.
After your neck, your back is the most vulnerable to soft tissue damage during a car accident. Your lower spine also goes through a whiplash-like movement, resulting in sprains and strains in your back and along the spine. A mild soft tissue injury may cause severe back pain and muscle spasms.
A car accident can stretch or tear your core muscles. In many cases, the pull of the seatbelt against your body strains the muscles. In addition to the pain, you may have tenderness, muscle spasms, and difficulty twisting and bending.
Our Florida Pain Medicine team specializes in comprehensive pain management, including advanced interventional and regenerative medicine.
Call the nearest office today, or complete the online form to request an appointment.
