Whiplash is a term we give to a sprain, an injury to the neck area, usually as a result of a sport or traffic accident or a trip or fall. This can sometimes lead pain in the shoulder, back and arms. If any of the cervical nerves are damaged the patient may experience tingling or numbness of the arms and hands. The correct medical term for a ‘whiplash’ injury is when there is a deceleration that causes the head to be jerked back and forth in a whip-like motion or suddenly turns with force.
Even slow car blows can cause neck movement enough to cause a neck injury whiplash, people are surprised how even a stroke or a minor car accident can induce symptoms of whiplash.
The worst scenario is the spine or spinal cord damage are caused by a whiplash injury very serious, although this is rare. Whiplash most common neck can damage the soft tissues of neck, neck muscles and ligaments.
It is widely documented that women are more likely than men to whiplash injuries of the neck and his neck muscles are weaker.
The prognosis depends on the severity of the sprain, but in most cases the prognosis is good in most cases. Most people get better after a few days and can expect a full recovery within weeks. A small number of people may have persistent symptoms that can result in long-term suffering.
Diagnosis and treatment for a neck injury whiplash
A visit to your doctor for confirmation is the usual first step for diagnosis. It will examine your neck and arms, checking for signs of damage to the vertebrae, spine or nerves in the spinal cord. If any of these symptoms, no doubt, will suggest additional tests.
First, the exercise of his neck, trying to keep moving as normally as possible that you would. However, if the pain is particularly acute in the beginning you may need to rest the neck for a day or two. As soon as possible some gentle exercises to be introduced, otherwise you run the risk of stiffness. Start slowly and try to increase the range of neck movements every few hours.
Analgesics may be helpful and may be prescribed by your doctor or purchased at your local pharmacy.
For an adult Paracetamol 500 mg tablets x 2, four times a day is usually sufficient. A murderer in the worst pain is an option such as codeine. This often is taken in addition to paracetamol.
Or an anti-inflammatory painkiller such as ibuprofen / diclofenac / Naproxen can be done in combination with paracetamol. However, some people who suffer from asthma, high blood pressure, kidney failure, stomach ulcers or heart failure may not be able to take any nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory and it is always best to consult your doctor before taking them.
If your neck muscles to begin to be tense and the pain gets worse, then a muscle relaxant such as diazepam can help can help.
Some other consequences of a whiplash injury may include hearing loss, sore throat, headache, redness of eyes slightly, dizziness and facial tingling.
If pain persists or continues to experience consequences beyond a period of 4-6 weeks you should go back to see your doctor.
Other treatments may be considered as physiotherapy, traction, heat and ice treatments and manipulation. Support, pillow firm can offer support and help with sleep. Good posture, sitting upright, not tilted. The use of a cervical collar for warmth and support. Yoga and Pilates may prove as another option, although nothing is guaranteed.
What is a whiplash neck injury?
July 27, 2010 7:53 pm
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Whiplash payout
June 29, 2010 12:55 pm
Every whiplash payout is dependant on a number of variable factors, these include :
- Severity of personal injury – this is dependant on the physical pain & suffering you went / are going through as a direct result of the accident you had.
- Emotional pain – you may be able to make a claim for the emotional pain and loss of enjoyment of life that has occured. This also will take into account any psychological disorders such as depression which has been brought on as a result of your accident.
- Loss of earnings. (This can include any potential loss of future earnings as a result of your whiplash injuries.)
- Damage to your possessions within the vehicle.
- Car hire costs as a result of your own vehicle being in for repair.
- Any other financial losses or expenses you have incurred such as if you have had to pay for someone to look after you whilst you recover from your whiplash injuries and any mediacl treatment you have had to have as a result of your accident.
Guide lines for the average whiplash compensation claim are :
- Minor whiplash injury where you make a full recovery within a year: upto £2,500
- Minor whiplash injury where you make a full recovery within 2 years: upto £4,000
- For moderate cases of whiplash: upto £7,000
- For more severe cases (eg. Fractures) where symptoms are permanent: upto £250,000
So to sum up, the more severe your whiplash neck or back injury, the more likely you are to receive a higher level of compensation. If you are interested in pursuing a whiplash compensation claim or would like to know more information then just fill in the form on the right hand side of our home page.
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What is being done by the car industry to prevent whiplash injuries!
April 30, 2010 6:56 am
The onus has been on the car and vehicle manufacturers to look at ways of protecting drivers and passengers from whiplash injuries. Protection efforts to date have been hampered by our lack of information as to the causes of whiplash injuries. The car manufacturers have focused on preventive measures to date. These have been focused on the design of car seats, how they are made, shape, materials and primarily through the introduction of head restraints, often called headrests.
Though full credit has to be given to the car and vehicle manufacturers this approach is potentially problematic given the underlying assumption that purely mechanical factors cause whiplash injuries – an unproven theory.
To date the whiplash injury reducing effects of head restraints appears to have been low, approximately 5% to 10%, this is because car seats have become firmer so that they can with stand better high-speed rear-end collisions. However this development could in turn have increased the risk of whiplash injury in low-speed rear impact collisions.
But as mentioned above it has not all been about the introduction of head rests as other improvements have been made to the style / geometry of car seats through better design and improved energy absorption. Active devices now move the occupants body in a car crash in order to shift the loads on the car seat.
Below are some of the refinements that have been introduced by manufacturers to their cars :
- Saab (Responsible for the first active head restraint), Opel, Ford, Nissan, Subaru, Hyundai, and Peugeot – Active Head restraint (SAHR),
- Volvo and Jaguar – Whiplash Protection System / Whiplash Prevention System (WHIPS), and
- Toyota – Whiplash Injury Lessening (WIL). One study found that an active head restraint system helps reduce the risk of neck injuries by up to 75% in rear-end collisions.
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Whiplash Injuries & how safe are our roads?
April 16, 2010 7:32 am
I read recently that since the introduction of the automobile it is estimated that over 30 million people have died in road traffic accidents across the world. To put that into perspective, that is more than the number of soldiers who died in both World War 1 and World War 2, combined!!!!
Globally it is estimated that over 20 million people are involved in road traffic accidents each year, with over 1 million of these suffering fatal injuries. Road traffic accidents have come to the attention of the World Health Organisation, who in 2004, selected road safety as a key area to focus upon.
Against this background, here in the UK in 2008 ( which is the latest data available from the Department of Transport ) there was a total of 230,905 reported casualties of all severities. Of which 2,538 people were killed, a reduction of 14% o the 2007 figures. What you have to bear in mind with these figures is the word “reported”.
If you compare police data on road traffic deaths with other sources such as hospital admissions data then the correlation between death registrations varies very little, as few, if any road fatalities are not reported to the police. However there is a much different picture when you start to look at non-fatal road traffic accidents.
It has been known for some time that a considerable proportion of non-fatal road traffic accidents are not know to the police, and the best current estimate of road casualties in 2008 in the UK after cross-checking with police, hospital, survey and compensation claim data suggest that the total number of road casualties is somewhere between 680,000 and 920,000 with the central estimate being 800,000.
Of those receiving an injury as a result of a road traffic accident around 55% suffered from whiplash symptoms and either treat the symptoms themselves with pain killers or visit a GP or Accident & Emergency.
After a road traffic accident whiplash symptoms can often take awhile to appear, if you have suffered any bruising to the neck muscles then this injury will not usually be obvious until sometime after the incident. Typically it can take betwee 6 to 12 hours to become apparent, which is why the pain and stiffness you feel, is usually far worse, the morning after a road traffic accident. Common Whiplash Symptons to look out for are pains in the neck area, a stiffness in the neck, swelling to the neck, a tenderness along the back of the neck, headaches and a reduction or loss of movement in the neck.
If you have suffered from any of these whiplash symptoms in the last three years as a result of a non-fault, road traffic accident and you haven’t already made a whiplash compensation claim, then you should do so without delay. Here at Whiplash Compensation Online we have simplified the procedure, making it easier than ever to start a No Win No Fee claim that won’t cost you a single penny and were you will be guaranteed to receive 100% of the whiplash compensation that is awarded to you.
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Tags: Tags: Road Traffic Accident, Whiplash compensation, whiplash symptoms
Whiplash & its common causes
March 23, 2010 1:55 pm
Whiplash and its common causes
Whiplash is defined as when the soft tissue, ligaments and muscles that make up the neck region experience sudden forward and then backward movement. Hyperflexion is the name given to the neck moving forward and Hyperextension is the name given to the neck moving backwards. This sudden movement is greater than the normal tolerances of the human body, hence why an whiplash injury occurs
There are many causes as to why someone may suffer a whiplash injury, this site focuses on whiplash to drivers and passengers who have been involved in a Road Traffic Accident. But whiplash can be caused by a person shaking a child violently though the majority of whiplash injuries other than a road traffic accident occur due to participating in sports eg. rugby, football, hockey and horse riding to name but some. Slips, trips or falls can also lead to whiplash injuries especially on icy pavements or slippery floors.
When someone suffers a whiplash injury they initially may not be even aware that an injury has occurred. However it is or advice that if you have been the victim of such an accident as listed above or think your neck may have exceeded its normal tolerance levels then you should seek medical attention.
Whiplash symptoms to look out for are :
- Headaches : which start in the morning and last for hours.
- Stiff Neck : a difficulty in moving your neck, which could be the result of tissue, ligament or muscle damage.
- Tenderness in the neck or back.
- A tingling sensation : which occurs as result of nerve compression in the spinal column.
There are a number of issues that can interfere with a patients recovery from a whiplash injury, the main one being if the patient has any other injuries or health factors that complicate the situation. Has the patient suffered from whiplash injuries in a previous Road Traffic Accident, Slip, trip or fall or sports injury? Were they suffering from prior pain that disguises the whiplash injury, such as headaches , back ache or other medical condition with symptoms the same as or similar to whiplash symptoms.
Whiplash victims can have whiplash symptoms that can last for days, weeks, years or in extreme cases for the rest of their lives. It is always the advice of this site that you should seek medical advice if you think you have suffered a whiplash injury and the content in this article and indeed the medical content of this site is for educational purposes only.
Finally if you have suffered a whiplash injury through no fault of your own then we are here to help you look into making a whiplash compensation claim. The cause of your injury, the symptoms you have experienced and the risk factors involved can all be used to calculate how much whiplash compensation your claim may be worth.
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Doctors must stop playing along with this Whiplash charade
March 5, 2010 3:49 pm
This article appeared in “The Guardian” on Tuesday 2nd March 2010
Dr Crippen: Doctors must stop playing along with this whiplash charade
“A conspiracy between GPs, poor medical science and vulnerable patients has generated a bogus industry
It is a rare week that a GP does not see a patient who claims to have a whiplash injury. They walk in smiling, and say they have “been advised by . . . (insert police/ insurance company/great Aunt Bertha) to get themselves checked by the doctor” so that it is “on the record”. The stories they give are remarkably similar: usually, they have been “rear-ended” while their car was stopped at a junction or going on to a roundabout. It happened a few days ago and now they are a “bit stiff”.
In Canada, a Quebec government research project defined five grades of whiplash injury:
Grade 1: Whiplash Symptoms (the mildest) No complaints about neck, no physical signs.
Grade 2 : Whiplash Injury resulting in neck pain, stiffness or tenderness only. No physical signs.
Grade 3 : Whiplash Injuries resulting in neck complaints and musculo-skeletal signs (limitation of movement and localised tenderness).
Grade 4 : Whiplash injuries resulting in neck complaints with signs of nerve damage.
Grade 5 : Chronic Whiplash (most severe) Fracture or dislocation.
Over the last 10 years, I have seen only one patient who sustained grade 5 neck injuries. The paramedics saved his life by immobilising him. The other 426 (I did a computer search) had no significant injuries. Most were grade 2; some were grade 3. Amazingly, there was a number of grade 1s. Why did they even come to the doctor?
I do not know how many have made claims against insurance companies, but the Association of British Insurers says its members receive almost 1,200 Whiplash Claims of this type every day, worth a staggering £2bn a year. These “whiplash injuries” cost the NHS approximately £8m a year.
In Whiplash and Other Useful Illnesses, Andrew Malleson, a Canadian psychiatrist, shows how an occult conspiracy between doctors, poor medical science and vulnerable patients has generated a bogus “whiplash” industry. Family doctors in the UK usually find that patients who have no objective signs of physical injury, but still present with persistent symptoms that they relate to “whiplash”, often have more subtle and possibly psychological problems. They may even be on the slippery slope to “fibromyalgia” – whatever that is. There is any amount of bad medical science upon which both doctors and patients rely.
Malleson argues it is the doctors who are to blame. When we should be saying to people, “Well, yes, I am sure you have been a bit shaken up by the road traffic accident,” our computers encourage us to enter “whiplash” on the patient’s summary. We need to stop doing that. We need to reserve the diagnosis “whiplash injury” for patients who have grade 4 and grade 5 problems.
Above all, we need to protect vulnerable people from alternative quacktitioners who make a living out of conditions such as “chronic whiplash” and “fibromyalgia”, and will keep rubbing a patient until his wallet is empty.”
What is your opinion?
Do you like me find this Guardian article has been very poorly written, showing a lack of understanding about Whiplash and also the condition known as Fibromyalgia (FM).
There is a definite correlation for some Fibromyalgia sufferers between being involved in a Road Traffic Accident and the onset of FM.
As it says on the Fibrpmyalgia Association UK web site “Fibromyalgia often develops after some sort of trauma that seems to act as a trigger, such as a fall or car accident”
This is clearly not taken into account by the author, neither is any type of understanding for Fibromyalgia.
A copy of the Guardian article can be read at the URL below:
[url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/mar/02/dr-crippen-bogus-whiplash-industry]See here[/url]
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