Don’t Ignore Whiplash
Greenville, NC chiropractors are seeing more and more car accident patients lately. With the constant growth in Greenville, NC there are more people on the roads and more people getting into car accidents. As a chiropractor, I often take for granted that the importance of spinal health is not always understood both by victims of car accidents but also by other chiropractors and healthcare professionals.
Whiplash is particularly often poorly understood and as a result, ignored by car accident victims. If neck pain or headaches resolve then the assumption is that the problem is gone. Even worse is that many other chiropractors, medical doctors, and physical therapists reiterate this misinformation. In a pain based and symptoms driven culture we are often misled as to what the true problem is when it comes to the cause of headaches, neck pain and other symptoms that can arise from being in a car accident. The importance of spinal structure and stability cannot be stressed enough with whiplash injuries from car accidents.
If you have been in a car accident it’s imperative that you find a chiropractor who is able to determine the true severity of your whiplash injury. This can only be done by a chiropractor who is capable of evaluating your spine and comparing it to a normal structure. It’s important that your chiropractor understands how to determine if there is any spinal instability and how to correct and stabilize it. Many chiropractors take x-rays but not all of them reevaluate via x-rays at the end of care to determine if the spine is in fact stable.
The standard for care for whiplash from car accidents is typically just to get the patient out of pain. Medical doctors are untrained in correcting spinal instability. In emergencies, they can use surgery as a last resort. However, this should only be done after chiropractic care has been utilized unless there is a clear emergency and extremely severe injury present. Otherwise, chiropractic should always be the first choice.
Physical therapy is another option that focuses on improving mobility and strengthening exercises to reduce pain and improve function. The problem with physical therapy is that physical therapists are not qualified to order or to read x-rays to determine the presence of or severity of spinal instabilities from whiplash. Physical therapy is also not capable of making objective changes to a patient’s spine that can be measured on x-rays. This is not to say that physical therapy is not helpful but it is often not the appropriate healthcare professional to turn to if you have sustained a whiplash injury during a car accident.
Research shows that physical therapy and medical intervention is often capable of reducing neck pain, headaches, and symptoms that are a result of a whiplash injury. However, follow-up studies show that patients who had abnormal or unstable spines as a result of whiplash injuries showed significantly more reoccurrence of neck pain and headaches after physical therapy care had stopped. Patients of structurally focuses chiropractors who performed the same physical therapy and changed on one specific type of spinal remodeling traction, showed objective x-ray improvements, more stability, and less pain upon follow-up over a year later.
If you are in looking for a chiropractor in Greenville, NC, call Corrective Chiropractic today for to set up a consult with the chiropractor, Dr. Bret Wickstrom. Find out what the difference is between orthodox medical care, physical therapy, traditional chiropractic, and structural chiropractic. If you’re a victim of a car accident whiplash injury, you deserve to have you injury corrected not just covered up with pain based healthcare.
