Motor Vehicle Accidents

Dr. Talbitzer is here to give you relief from accident pain

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Whiplash injury occurs when the body reacts to a deceleration or acceleration force by hyperflexion or hyperextension of the neck. Platte Valley Chiropractic Acupuncture & Wellness Center specializes in treating whiplash injuries and auto accident injuries.  Whiplash injuries are very common in car accidents. Whiplash injuries occur, in part, due to the fact that the muscles do not have enough time to brace themselves.

If you have been involved in a car accident, whiplash injuries need to be taken very seriously. Because symptoms of a whiplash injury can take weeks or even months to manifest, it is easy to be fooled into thinking that you are not as seriously injured as you may be.  Symptoms from a car accident and whiplash can include anything from radiating pain into the shoulder, elbow pain, wrist pain or hand pain, lower back pain, headaches, jaw pain and more.

Platte Valley Chiropractic Acupuncture & Wellness Center treats victims of auto accidents and motorcycle accidents.

Injuries from Whiplash Trauma

Whiplash injuries can manifest themselves in a wide variety of ways, including neck pain, headaches, fatigue, upper back and shoulder pain, and low back pain. Due to the fact that numerous factors play into the overall whiplash trauma, such as direction of impact, speed of the vehicles involved, as well as sex, age and physical condition, whiplash symptoms commonly have a delayed onset, often taking weeks or months to become evident.

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A number of conditions those who have suffered from whiplash trauma experience include:

• Neck pain – Most neck and upper back pain is caused by a combination of factors, including injury, poor posture, chiropractic subluxations, stress, and in some instances, disc problems.  Neck pain is the single most common complaint reported by our patients who have experienced whiplash trama. Often the pain radiates across the shoulders, up into the head, and down between the shoulder blades. Whiplash injuries tend to affect all of the tissues in the neck, including the facet joints and discs between the vertebrae, as well as all of the muscles, ligaments and nerves.Disc injury is also a common cause of neck pain, especially chronic pain. The outer wall of the disc can be torn during a whiplash trauma.
• Headaches – After neck pain, headaches are the second most common complaint from those suffering from whiplash injury. While some headaches are actually the result of direct brain injury, most are related to injury of the muscles, ligaments and facet joints of the cervical spine, which refer pain to the head.
• TMJ pain – A less common, but very debilitating disorder that results from whiplash, is temporomandibular joint dysfunction (TMJ). TMJ usually begins as pain along with clicking and popping noises in the jaw during movement. Our chiropractors at the Platte Valley Chiropractic Acupuncture & Wellness Center are specially trained to treat TMJ problems.
• Lower back pain – Most people consider whiplash to be an injury of the neck. However, the lower back is also commonly injured as well. In fact, low back pain is found in more than half of rear impact-collisions in which injury was reported, and almost three-quarters of all side-impact crashes. This is mostly due to the fact that the low back still experiences a tremendous compression.

Healing from Whiplash Injury

With proper care, many mild whiplash injuries heal within six to nine months. Whiplash is a unique condition that requires the expertise of a skilled health professional specially trained to work with these types of injuries. The most effective treatment for whiplash injuries is a combination of chiropractic care and rehabilitation of the soft tissues.