What are you supposed to do after an auto accident? What happens? What are the steps? The first thing is to make sure that your vehicle’s out of the roadway so that there’s not a secondary accident or something else that happens. The second thing you should do is make sure that if emergency medical services need to show up on the scene, they’ve been notified so that all parties can get treated with emergency services if they need to be treated.
The rest of it is kind of secondary. Yes, you need to contact an attorney. Yes, you need to contact your insurance company, but not necessarily in that order. Yes, you should contact a chiropractor. We do great work with soft tissue injuries. We do great work with spinal injuries. Let a chiropractor assess your spine to make sure that there’s nothing overtly very dangerous for you in the short run, and then nothing that will become chronic in the long run if you don’t look at it early.
Research shows that if you’re treating these whiplash disorders early on after the car accident, you get much better outcomes. Something between 7% and 10% of people after a whiplash trauma end up with pain way later in life. Some say it’s permanent. Way down the road, five years, ten years, 20 years down the road, you’re ending up with spinal pain related to this auto accident that you didn’t get cared for. It’s important to end up going to the chiropractor sooner than later. The other thing is you need to use ice on your injuries right away. Maybe you are going to the hospital, maybe you don’t, maybe they give you x-rays or medication, maybe they don’t. But, you need to be putting ice on that evening to reduce the acute swelling that’s going on there.
We see a lot of patients here at our Orlando chiropractic office for second opinions. A lot of times after a car accident, maybe you’ve talked to your attorney, and they sent you to a facility. You’re not happy with that facility, whether it’s the wait time, the distance, what they’re doing, or how it made you feel. We do a lot of second opinions for car accident cases. I’m not saying come here, and we’re going to do something different. You might be at a great place. They might be doing exactly the right thing, and if you come in a second opinion and that’s the case, I’m going to tell you exactly that.
Make sure they’re getting you the care they’re getting you the imaging that you need, whether it’s x-rays or MRIs or both. You also want to be sure to get a second opinion from a medical doctor as well. All of these things, I think are very important after a car accident, but make sure that you’re going through some of that scenario. You wouldn’t know otherwise if you’re at a good facility or a bad facility, but go back through that checklist, to be sure they are covering all the bases. And as always, reach out to us for help with your neck, back and body pain after an accident, we will make sure you get the very best care to get you back to normal life as soon as possible.
