How a Car Accident Can Cause Injury
Grappin Clinic • November 19, 2019
Lower Back Injury: Doctor Explains Injuries from Car Accident
Car accidents can cause herniations, protrusions, and other injuries to a person's lower back (lumbar spine), upper back (thoracic spine), and neck (cervical spine). In this video clip, Butler Tobin asked our client's doctor to explain how car accidents can cause spinal injuries.
Video Transcript:
This is a model of the spine and this is the back of the head, of the skull and so you're looking at it from the side view.
This is a neck, thoracic or the spine at the chest. The lumbar spine is made of little blocks that are stacked on top of each other like bricks. In between are the discs that act like shock absorbers or cushions.
Over time several things can happen. These things they can wear down over time. The disk can collapse if you have an injury with a trauma that forces you forward or sideways. You can have enough force to injure the discs and symptoms such as radiculopathy or sciatica.
When we talk about pinching of the nerves the discs can bolt back and press on a nerve that can press it against the bone and that pinching or compressing of the nerve can give you the symptoms.
In the model you've got these little plastic things between the white blocks that represent the disks. These white blocks between the white little plastic cushions are a disk. The white area here is the bone and these yellow things coming out are the nerves.
So when there's a disc herniation how does that affect a nerve? Well the disc herniation or disc protrusion will come back and will actually compress or pinch the nerve against the wall of the bone and put pressure on the nerve as it's trying to come out of this opening.
Can that lead to symptoms like radiculopathy that traveling pain that you described? Answer: Yes.
Can a car wreck affect a disk, can it hurt discs? Answer: Well any type of injury with enough force can hurt it.
How might that happen in a car wreck? If you can demonstrate that with the spine in your hands.
Well now obviously if somebody's sitting, they would be sitting this way. If they're driving they'd have a belt across them this way and if you have enough force what usually happens to the spine the person gets thrown forward but there's usually some port force that catches them.
So you can put a force on the spine, what we call a flexion movement, where the spine goes forward with enough force it can injure muscles, ligaments, discs that are surrounding the area, and then usually you get thrown back with a recoil force.
If you have been hurt in a car accident call Grappin Clinic today to receive the care and help you need to heal from your injuries.
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