The types of truck and car accidents that get featured in the nightly news often involve severe injuries such as paralysis, spinal cord injuries, and fatalities. Compared to that, soft tissue injuries seem less severe and less newsworthy, but these types of injuries can cause a great deal of suffering and can keep you from work and from living your life fully.
A soft tissue injury is one that affects the muscles, ligaments, or tendons. Tendons are the bands that attach bones and muscles while ligaments are the tissue that stabilize joints and connect bones. Injuries to these or to muscle can result from slip and fall accidents in Homestead and other communities, but these injuries are also common with sports injuries and with traffic crashes. Any time a vulnerable area is suddenly twisted or overused, a soft tissue injury is possible.
Soft tissue injuries can actually involve a number of types of injuries, including:
•Strains
•Contusions
•Tendonitis
•Sprains
•Bursitis
These injuries can be extremely painful and can leave you unable to live your life normally. A severe sprain, for example, can cause swelling and severe pain, leaving you unable to place weight on the affected site. Severe sprains can also cause swelling and severe pain.
Mild soft tissue injuries are often treated with elevation, compression, rest, and applications of ice. Elastic bandages are also sometimes used to reduce swelling. For severe soft tissue injuries, a splint or other medical device may be needed to keep the area from moving so that healing can take place. Of course, since these types of injuries are quite painful, pain management is also an important part of the healing process.
After a car collision in Homestead or another community, swelling or pain in an affected area may be the first sign that a soft tissue injury has occurred. While soft tissue injuries are quite common in traffic crashes, they cannot be detected with X-rays the way that fractures can, so it can be quite difficult to diagnose these injuries. Worse, many patients find that it can take hours or days for symptoms to develop. A patient (and their doctor) may assume that no injury has occurred only to find that pain develops and a soft tissue injury is in fact present.
In these situations, it can sometimes be difficult for a patient to prove that the injury was caused by the car accident and it can be challenging to secure compensation for the injuries. If a driver files an insurance claim quickly after a car or truck accident in Homestead or their city, they may get an insurance offer before they even develop symptoms or get a proper diagnosis for their soft tissue injuries. If they accept the insurance money, they may lose out on the chance to get fair compensation that will cover the medical treatment for their injury. In some cases, the insurance company may be suspicious about the cause of the injury or may claim that the injury was not caused by the accident because no symptoms were seen right away.
In these cases, it is important to get medical treatment right away, since soft tissue injuries can get worse without medical attention. It is also important to consult with a personal injury attorney to ensure that you can secure fair compensation if you qualify. To contact a personal injury attorney, contact Flaxman Law Group at 1-866-FLAXMAN (1-866-352-9626) to schedule a no cost, no obligation case review.