Cervical injuries, commonly known as neck injuries, often occur in work and vehicle accidents. Whiplash is the most recognized type, typically treated with physical therapy. More severe injuries, like disc herniations, may require surgical intervention. It's crucial to accurately identify the source of pain, as symptoms can overlap between neck and shoulder injuries. Legal assistance can help navigate medical care and insurance claims for recovery.
The most common cervical injury is whiplash, often resulting from car accidents. Other types include disc herniations, which may require surgical procedures like cervical fusion.
Cervical injuries are diagnosed through a combination of physical examinations and imaging tests, such as MRIs or X-rays, to identify the source of pain.
If you suspect a cervical injury, seek medical attention promptly. It's important to communicate your symptoms clearly to ensure proper diagnosis and treatment.
A cervical injury is also known as a neck injury. We see these commonly in work accidents, industrial accidents, car wrecks, truck wrecks. Unfortunately they are a common type of injury. Now the most common cervical injury that we all know about is whiplash. And whiplash is usually resolved through physical therapy, maybe chiropractic care. But cervical injuries can be a lot more extensive. For example, you can have disc herniations. And those require what we call a disc fusion or a cervical fusion. And typically what happens there is a surgeon goes in, be it an orthopedic surgeon or a neurosurgeon, and they remove the disc that is injured, plate the vertebrae, put in a spacer and take away the pain, the numbness and tingling that is running through a person's arms and their shoulders. Now the interesting thing about cervical injuries is this. The same neurological dermatone that goes through your shoulder goes to your neck. And so a lot of times we'll have people come in complaining of shoulder pain when it's actually a neck injury or vice versa. They may think, hey, I was in a car accident, I have whiplash, I was rear ended, and now I think I've herniated or hurt my neck. When in fact they've tore a rotator cuff in the shoulder. So you have to be very specific with your doctor as to where the pain is. Now throughout my career and Tom's career at McCutcheon and Hamner, we have worked extensively with neurosurgeons and orthopedic surgeons getting the appropriate care for our clients and ensuring that they look at, hey, is this a possibility of a shoulder injury or is this truly a neck injury? We work not only with the surgeons, we work with the insurance companies to make sure everything is covered through your health insurance. And then if you have long term care, short term disability policies, we make sure that those are in place to help you during your time of recovery. Now workers compensation is different obviously. If you're injured on the job and you have a cervical injury, we'll help you get to the doctor, we'll help you pick the best surgeon. Of course you'll draw a wage while you're out of work recovering and we'll help you if you're not able to get back to work or have what we call a future loss of earning capacity. We'll make sure that the insurance companies do right by you.
