I love to see new patients after a car accident. Let me explain.
Patients come into the office usually days or a few weeks after a car accident. This means that their injuries are only the same length of time, so the long term effects of spine conditions (degenerative disc disease, arthritis) have not taken place.
Car accidents can cause short term pain, headaches and tiredness. But after a week, these should go away if there are no hidden spinal conditions. If not, then its time to get checked out.
An x-ray analysis is the best start of find any accident injuries. With Silvia’s case it was more neck related. Here is a normal neck⤵
We compare with the accident victim’s neck to check for differences in the curve, disc spaces, and angle of the first bone (see image above).
Here was Silvia’s x-ray:
You can see the straightening of the curve, leading to a 25mm Forward Head Posture position. This would lead to the symptoms she was feeling (watch her testimonial below), due to the locking of the spine. Long-term, this could lead to scar tissue formation and permanent arthritis.
Silvia was given treatment for 3 months to reduce her symptoms, correct her spine and confirm she could return to her normal physical activities and school. All of this was accomplished. Here are her results:
This x-ray show an improvement of the FHP to 13mm, fixing her neck. At this point normal motion has been returned to the neck, and should maintain with proper exercise.
The goal of patients looking to recover from car accidents is to understand their injuries first. Then fix the root cause of their symptoms (pain, etc.) so nothing returns when we stop care. We accomplished this with Silvia.
