The damage inflicted upon your car after an accident can be anything from a minor dent in the bumper to a complete “accordion” smash to the front end that results in the total loss. The same can be said about a potential injury.
You can walk away from an accident without a scratch, or you can suffer from serious trauma. One of the most common injuries from a car accident is soft tissue injuries.
A soft tissue might not reveal itself for hours or days after an accident, and they often require physical therapy and time off from work for a full recovery. That can contribute to financial losses that put a strain on your family’s budget. It is even worse if those injuries were caused by another driver’s negligence.
In that situation, you’re entitled to seek compensation.
Locking down that settlement might involve more than submitting an online claim through an insurance portal. You might need the support of a Santa Fe car accident attorney with experience in negotiation and litigation. That will ensure your rights are protected as you seek out the maximum benefits you’re entitled to.
First, you need to understand what soft tissue injuries are all about and how they impact an accident claim. The following post provides an overview of soft tissue injuries.
Common Types of Soft Tissue Injuries from Car Accidents
According to data collected by the University of New Mexico, there were 13,244 injuries from car crashes in New Mexico in a single year. Many of those injuries involve damage to muscles, ligaments, and tendons. Those are classified as soft tissue injuries, and they occur when the sudden impact of a collision forces your body to jolt forward and back.
These are the common types of soft tissue injuries that might be the result of your accident:
- Whiplash: This soft tissue injury occurs when the force of impact snaps your neck back and forth. The result is a strain or sprain that results in a stiff neck, headaches, and shoulder pain.
- Muscle Strains: When you strain your muscles or tendons, it can result in spasms, weakness, and pain that frequently shows up in your back and neck.
- Ligament Sprains: Ligaments are the tissues that connect your bones. When they are overstretched or torn, they can cause radiating pain in your joints, such as the shoulders, knees, and wrists.
- Contusions: A contusion is a deep or superficial bruise that results from blunt force trauma, such as hitting the dashboard or straining against your seatbelt. It can cause swelling, skin discoloration, and potential muscle dysfunction.
- Torn ACL/MCL: Knee ligaments can tear during a collision when your car comes to an abrupt stop.
- Shoulder Impingement: Tension from the point of impact can cause inflammation of the shoulder tendons.
It is important to note that you could experience several soft tissue injuries all from the same accident.
Recognizing Early Warning Signs and Delayed Symptoms
If you’ve ever worked out hard at the gym or spent time in the garden or moving boxes around the house, you could experience pain the next day. This would be a minor soft-tissue injury related to muscle strain.
After a car accident, the symptoms of a soft tissue injury could not manifest for several hours.
They might also be delayed until the following day. These are the early warning signs you need to watch out for:
- Pain
- Tenderness
- Swelling and Inflammation
- Visible Bruising
- Stiffness
- Reduced Range of Motion
- Warmth
- Muscle Spasms
- Numbness
- Redness
If any of the visible injuries, like inflammation or bruising, show up, you should take photos to use in your claim.
The Danger of Ignoring Micro-Tears and Internal Inflammation
A micro-tear does not sound bad. After all, it is just micro. However, when it comes to a soft-tissue injury, a micro-tear can quickly evolve into a major injury that can be extremely debilitating.
When a micro-tear occurs, your body will try to repair the damage with collagen fibers, otherwise known as scar tissue.
The buildup of those fibers can lead to stiffness and reduced range of motion.
If you don’t treat the inflammation, it can lead to myofibril degeneration, which causes muscle cells to shrink. That can lead to permanent muscle weakness. Your ignored inflammation can also trigger the onset of chronic tendinosis, which is a hard-to-treat degenerative condition.
When you experience pain in one area from a soft-tissue injury, you could force other joints and muscles to overcompensate. That can lead to strain on the muscles and ligaments that weren’t originally injured in the accident.
In extreme cases, an untreated deep bruise can manifest as myositis ossificans, where muscle tissue turns into bone.
Diagnostic Tools Used to Identify Soft Tissue Damage
When you feel aches and pains from soft-tissue damage, it is vital to seek medical attention for a thorough examination. If it has been a while since you had an examination involving diagnostic tools, you’ll be impressed at how technology has improved and provided doctors with sharp and precise imaging that can help to accurately diagnose the injury.
If your doctor orders a scan, it might be one of the following:
- Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
- Musculoskeletal Ultrasound (MSKUS)
- Computer Tomography (CT)
- X-Ray
Additionally, your doctor could order an electromyography (EMG), which measures electrical activity in muscles to assess their neuromuscular function. They might also order thermography, which can detect changes in skin temperature as it relates to inflammation, or an isokinetic dynamometry exam, which will measure muscle strength.
The results of any of these diagnostic scans will be an important part of the evidence you collect for your personal injury claim.
Steps to Take If You Suspect a Soft Tissue Injury
If you suspect that you’ve suffered a soft tissue injury from a car accident, it is essential to seek immediate medical evaluation. That exam protects your legal rights by establishing the causation between the accident and your injury. If you delay seeking medical evaluation, the insurance company might assert that your injuries were caused by an incident that wasn’t the accident.
The reason you might experience pushback from an insurance company is because of New Mexico’s pure comparative negligence laws. That allows you to seek out compensation for injuries caused by another person’s negligence, even if it is found that you might be partially responsible for that accident.
For example, you might slip on a wet floor in a grocery store. It could be that the shoes you wore did not have a good tread. However, it was primarily the wet floor that caused you to slip. If you are found partially at fault, your final settlement will be reduced accordingly. Even if they can save 20% on a settlement, the insurance company will fight for that.
This is why you need to get an experienced Santa Fe personal injury attorney involved in your claim as soon as possible.
The lawyers at the Barrera Law Group LLC have helped many clients who have suffered soft-tissue damage because of someone’s negligence. We understand that these injuries require ongoing care and proper healing time. That all has to be taken into account for any final settlement amount.
You don’t have to wait until your soft-tissue injury is completely healed to begin the claims process, but you should understand all your options. If you’ve suffered any kind of injury due to someone else’s actions, you can reach out to Barrera Law Group LLC to schedule a free consultation.
We’ll help you understand all the available options for seeking a remedy.