Whiplash
Treatment Recommendations
Highlights
From the Marc Darrow, M.D.,J.D. Radio Show
CALLER: MY question is, I
was in an accident and sustained injuries in the neck area, can you
explain whiplash to me?
Dr. Darrow: A
big problem is that people drive with their head restraints too
low. So when they are rear-ended,
their heads are thrown back violently
while their car keeps moving forward.
In whiplash,
your neck is kind of in an S-shape, when your
head comes forward when your car stops, there is a sheer force on the
vertebrae that can actually tear the vertebral end plates where the
vertebrae attach to the discs and tear
ligaments and sometimes you can't
see this on X-rays or
MRIs
it is very subtle thing that can happen, certainly x-rays don't show it
at all.
So it is an injury to the structures that hold up the head and that can
be the
ligaments,
the parts of the muscles that attach to the bones, it can be the discs
themselves, you can get disc
herniation like that. And there are so many different side effects that
can come from this, neck pain to
headaches, some people get allergy type
symptoms, they get GI complaints where there stomach is inflamed,
anxiety problems, even depression. Some people even get
Fibromyalgia
which is just a syndrome, people get widespread pain. Fibromyalgia can
be set off by a car accident.
Many times doctors do not find what they
call objective findings, when they look at diagnostic studies, they
don't find anything at all, except that these people have a lot of
misery.
Whiplash throughout the years has been
laughed at by a lot of doctors. In the 19th century when people rode on
the railways, they use to bounce against each other (because of the
coupling system) and they use to wind up with whiplash, they called it
Railway spine and they laughed at that.
What we are finding now is that even with
low speed type car accidents, about 30-60% of these people end up with
long lasting injuries, and about 35-50% of them never recover.
Neck Pain and Whiplash Links
