Each year in Canada, there are approximately 1600 or more care accidents across the country. These collisions are not only costly, but come with serious health risks. Even if you aren't seriously injured, a small collision can result in long-lasting health consequences. Here, our Manotick physiotherapists explain how physical therapy can help to rehabilitate injuries from accidents.
You probably don't need to be told that car accidents and collisions may cause serious health issues or even be fatal to people who are caught in one of them. Even relatively monitor accidents can have long-lasting negative health effects. If not promtpyl diagnosed and treated, these adverse health conditions may result in life-long problems.
Some injuries that are sustained as a result of a car accident may not even be apparent until they begin the express themselves through pain, discomfort, stiffness and other serious symptoms for as long as months after your accident. Our Manotick physiotherapy centre is proud to be able to offer rehabilitation services for injuries and health conditions - including those results from car accidents.
Here are some of the conditions that may arise as a result of your involvement in a car accident and how our Manotick physical therapists can help to rehabilitate you through various physiotherapy interventions.
Conditions and Injuries caused by Car Accidents
A wide variety of health conditions and injuries are treatable by physiotherapists, including those that result from car accidents.
The two following injuries are some of the most common health issues resulting from a collision:
Whiplash
Whiplash is the most common injury resulting from a car accident. During a collision, your body will be suddenly jerked, causing your neck to whip back and forth and causing injury to the soft tissues, ligaments, joints and tendons in your neck.
Depending on its severity, whiplash may cause symptoms from neck pain and stiffness or restricted mobility. Its symptoms may also only begin expressing themselves days or weeks after the accident that caused them and may even grow worse with time.
Concussions and Other Traumatic Brain Injury
Since concussions can result from any sufficiently strong blow to your head, they are a relatively common result of vehicle collisions. Symptoms of a concussion include nausea and vomiting, memory issues, confusion, disorientation and problems with concentration.
When your brain has been jostled (such as from the jerking of the body during a vehicle collision), it can damage the brain and make it difficult for brain cells to function and communicate. It will generally take around a week or so for the symptoms of a concussion to subside after they first appear. However, for more severe injuries, the concussion symptoms can remain for much longer than that.x
How Can Physiotherapy Help Rehabilitate Car Accident Injuries?
Like physiotherapists can alleviate pain or discomfort from injuries that have been sustained through sports or poor ergonomics in your day to day life, physical therapy can be used ot help alleviate pain and stiffness, to restore mobility and to prevent the worsening of health issues resulting from a car accident.
Physiotherapy involves treatments administered to your injured areas (like massage, acupuncture, hot and cold packs and more) as well as prescribed exercises to help recover mobility, strengthen weakened muscles and alleviate pain as well as preventing future injury to the same tissues.
Our physiotherapists are able to help patients suffering from pain and discomfort as a result of injuries like whiplash or concussions in the following ways:
Support Quicker Recovery And Prevent Long-Term Damage
Health issues such as chronic headaches, the loss of balance, stiffness, chronic pain and the loss of motion may dissipate on their own, however, physical therapy can help to speed your recovery. It can also improve your strength, flexibility, balance and range of motion. By undergoing physiotherapy treatments, you can return to your normal life as soon as possible.
In some cases, if not treated by a physical therapist, car accident injuries may grow worse over time, becoming chronic, lifelong struggles.
Avoid Surgical Intervention or Improve Surgical Outcomes
In some instances, the injuries sustained during a car accident can be severe enough to require surgical treatments. There is sometimes a chance that these injuries may actually be resolved when rehabilitated through physiotherapy instead of through invasive procedures.
While this may not always be the case, and some injuries will indeed require surgery to resolve, physical therapy can be helpful in speeding your recovery from surgery and, if there is time, to improve the outcome of the surgery itself using proactive strengthening exercises.
The healthier you are going into surgery, the better.
The "Don'ts" Are Just as Important as The "Do's"
While there are specific treatments our physiotherapists offer patients who have been injured in car accidents, when it comes to trauma from an accident like this what we instruct you to refrain from doing is very important too.
Our Manotick physiotherapists can offer you guidance on how your routine will need to change after an accident where you were injured.
Things like making sure that you maintain good posture and avoid slouching as well as refraining from possibly harmful habits will be just as (if not more) important than the treatments and exercises that we do prescribe.