Can I Have Chronic Pain After a Car Accident?

There are tens of thousands of automobile accidents that occur every year in United States, and a considerable amount of the victims will end up with neck and back injuries. For most of these injuries, the pain will be short-lived and the person will be able to get back to normal activities. Typically over 90% of pain after an accident will resolve within 6 weeks.

However for an unlucky few, the pain may last for a lifetime unless proper treatment is initiated. Some of the conditions that can lead to chronic pain include:

繚 Scar tissue and calcium deposits can lead to stiffness and pain for a lifetime.

繚 Disc injuries or bulging discs which put pressure on spinal nerves. This condition is usually permanent.

繚 Long-term muscle spasm that can produce chronic pain syndrome.

繚 Myofascial pain syndrome with painful trigger points. Trigger points are knotted muscles in severe spasm which are painful when pressed. Sometimes, trigger point injections produce relief.

繚 Fibromyalgia, which can also produce chronic pain. Normally, only 6% of the people over 30 years of an age have degenerative changes that lead to arthritis. However, according to a medical study, 39% of auto accident victims will suffer degenerative changes in the neck and back that lead to osteoarthritis.

繚 Traumatically induced arthritis - Changes naturally occur in the neck and back bones as we age. In most people, these arthritic changes go unnoticed because they do not produce pain. This is a painful condition where the joints become inflamed and the pain can sometimes go from head to toe.

When one of these painful conditions occurs after an accident with an older victim, insurance companies may try to use arthritis as a reason to avoid paying an accident claim. What the insurance company will do is to have the victims see a doctor who can then blame all the neck or back pain on arthritis and then trying get the insurance company off the hook completely by saying that arthritis was present before the accident so therefore the pain must've been present before the accident.

This is unfortunate as no doctor can say for sure that the patient would have developed painful arthritis. There are many people who according to their spine x-rays, have advanced cases out of arthritis but never experienced any pain.

If a patient has arthritis on an imaging study, that arthritis was most likely present prior to the accident. However, the significant forces generated in the accident may have exacerbated the patient's condition and tipped him or her into a situation of considerable pain.