Injuries you could sustain in a car accident

Stomach pain or bruising

This can and more likely be caused by the seat belt. These injuries are common in a forced stop condition. For example, a head on collision. The seat belt will cause bruising and possible internal injuries. However, the outcome from not wearing one would have been much worse.

Back Pain

Herniated disk or damage to your spine. Your pain may actually get worse from the accident moving forward. Your body may want to compensate one way or another for other issues you may have. This in turn, would cause your back to hurt worse. These common injuries can be slight, mild or severe. Back pain might include fractures, disk issues, or mild strains of the muscles. Some of these symptoms might not show up for days.

Pelvis and leg pain

Strained muscles in your lower back, pelvis region can occur. They might dislocate (pelvic) or the muscles just are strained and stretched. Or worse, one of the issues is you have a broken bone

Knee issues

Torn meniscus or ACL can cause severe issues walking. They may require surgery to correct. In some instances your knees may hit the dashboard or another object in the vehicle. These objects don’t move, so when you hit them, they will do damage. On the other hand, you could have broken your patella.

Legs

Impact from the rear or front could cause your legs to shoot under the dash. This would damage the tops of your legs, such as your shin bone. It’s possible you could break your tibia or fibula. This would require immediate medical attention and possible surgery.

Hand and Arms

You may have a numbness or tingling sensation in your arms, fingers, or hands. This could be caused by a number of things. A pinched nerve is usually the culprit. Pinched nerves from your spine or neck affect your body in other areas. It is essentially cutting off the signal system to other areas of your body. To put it plainly, if you had a water hose and you pinched off half the water supply, you won’t get the full force of water out the end. A pinched nerve won’t let the brain and the limbs connect.

Lacerations

Cuts could be caused from flying glass, or objects inside the car at the time of the accident. Laceration’s of a certain degree would require immediate medical assistance.(stitches)

Facial

This type of injury is a result of your face coming in direct contact with an object. If you were not wearing a seatbelt, your face might end up hitting the windshield in a head on collision. If you have seen pictures of car accidents, you may have seen a huge bubble in the glass, that’s where someone’s head went because they were not wearing a seatbelt.

Burns

Airbags can cause burns to your face and arms. However, this does not occur all the time. It could be that you are sitting too close to the steering wheel or you have a faulty airbag.

Fractures and Broken Bones

This may be immediate pain or it may not. It depends on adrenaline or shock, the symptom is usually pain. However, the pain is caused obviously from the trauma from the broken bone. Other symptoms will be swelling or redness in the area where you have the broken bone or pain. This requires X RAYS and immediate medical assistance. Some broken bones require surgery to correct and some just require a cast.

Compound Fractures

This is where your bone actually breaks through the skin. I can speak personally on this because I had a compound fracture to the tibia and fibula. Likewise, the pain will be immense and the area for which the bone came out might be bleeding. Immediate swelling may occur. Compound fractures will require surgery to correct. If you see your bone sticking out of your skin, get to the Emergency Room ASAP. And, Compound fractures will take quite some time to heal. For example, if you broke your Tibia, it would take quite some time to heal vrs a broken rib or arm.

Psychological

While this may not affect adults, it certainly affects children. The psychological effects of a car accident to a child could be devastating. Children exhibit a type of behavior that if it hurts them, they never want to do it again. Adults can be the same way, but once you look at the statistics, adults tend to heal from this quickly, children do not.

All a child knows is that they had a car accident and now they are scared. They do not want to ever experience a car accident again, so they will never ride in a car again. For children, cars become a very scary place to be. Time may heal this or talking to a professional counselor.

Internal Bleeding

This could occur in major accident. Internal bleeding would need immediate attention from a hospital. Some of these conditions will be obvious right away, some will not.

Brain and head

Your brain rest on liquid. In an accident, your head might move forward and stop, but your brain does not. Although the outside of your head may show no damage at all, you could have what is called a TBI (Traumatic brain injury). Bruising on the brain could occur. A ct scan of the brain would be needed to determine this type of condition.

Death

We don’t like to talk about this one. However, it is possible you could die in a car accident. Although this is not an injury, it could happen. The cars they make now are much safer than the ones they made even 25 years ago. I have seen a few death cases in my lifetime as an investigator. It’s very sad to lose someone as a result of car accident.

Can doctors treat all of these injuries?

In most cases, yes. Doctors who deal with auto accidents are trained to alleviate the symptoms, and the pain. There job is to get you out of pain, and back to pre accident condition. Some injuries will never heal, such as a scar from a compound fracture, or the numbness around an area that had trauma done to it.

There are more, but these just happen to be the most common symptoms and conditions after you have been hurt in a car accident.