Surprising Auto Injury Facts

Besides whiplash, do you know what other injuries are diagnosed as an auto injury?

Here’s a list of a few of them:

• chest injuries
• fractured ribs
• abdominal injuries
• pelvic injuries and fracture
• puncture wounds

For example, there’s a type of seat belt that attaches at three points instead of the standard two points. Those who wear this type of seat belt are three times more likely to fracture their spine than those who wear the two-point seat belt.

And if someone didn’t wear the seat belt at all, their risk of having a fracture or dislocation as an auto injury was higher than those who wore any seat belt, whether it was the two-point or three-point belted varieties. Nevertheless, the three-point seat belts protected against neurological injury, fatality and worse injuries.

You might be a little surprised about this next fact discovered by the researchers: If the auto injury caused minor injuries the thoracic/lumbar spine (53% of 631 patients who suffered an auto injury in a database of 4572 patients), it usually meant there were other injuries that were worse. Often these other injuries were pelvic injuries or abdominal injuries.

Injuries could be caused from the body going into flexion, then distraction or from extension such as bracing because someone sees the accident coming. If a person braced their body into extension – bending backwards and suffered an auto injury, they were in the group with a 24% fatality rate. Others who didn’t brace had a fatality rate of only about 11%.

If you have an auto injury, seek proper medical and chiropractic care from Sweeney Chiropractic in Nashville, TN. Utilizing both together will speed your recovery and help you in more ways than each method by itself.

Source:

Rao, R.D., et al. Occupant and crash characteristics in the thoracic and lumbar spine injuries resulting from motor vehicle collisions. Spine J 2014 Jan 31. Epub ahead of print.