Regardless of how safe or careful you are, accidents happen. Whether something goes wrong at work, at play, or in the car, chances are you will be injured in an accident at one point or another in your life. When that happens, our care team at Pain Consultants of West Florida is here to provide the highest-quality care possible to you and your family.
Common Accident Injuries
Accidents can cause a wide variety of injuries because no part of your body is immune to acute injury. You could roll your ankle playing in the backyard with friends and family, throw out your back lifting something heavy around the house, or hurt your back in a car accident. Some of the most common injuries to result from accidents are fractures; dislocations; concussions; soft-tissue injuries like muscle, ligament or tendon strains and sprains; nerve damage or impingement; and whiplash.
Accident and Injury Causes
Injuries resulting from accidents are generally caused by violent gravitational forces, blunt force trauma or falls. The nature of your accident will largely determine the type and extent of your injuries because things like automobile accidents and falls will lead to more traumatic injuries than general wear-and-tear caused by repetitive use injuries, as is common with office workers (carpal tunnel syndrome) and manual laborers (joint pain and arthritis). Pain that is caused by damage to muscles, bones or organs, as is the case with pain caused by acute injury, is known as nociceptive pain; it can go away on its own as the tissues heal, but medical intervention is often required to achieve full resolution of painful symptoms. If you do not treat nociceptive pain, there is a chance it can turn into chronic pain, as the underlying cause goes untreated and the pain therefore never goes away.
Symptoms of Accidents and Injuries
The symptoms of an acute injury can range in severity from mild to severe and have an immediate onset or come on gradually over time. The most common symptoms of an injury are pain, swelling, loss of mobility and redness. In severe cases, there could even be visual changes at the site of injury, as is the case with broken or dislocated bones. Pain, whether it is acute or chronic, is your body’s way of telling you that something is wrong, so you should never ignore chronic pain. Doing so is essentially ignoring your body’s messages that something is wrong. Furthermore, waiting too long to seek medical treatment after an injury will not only prolong your suffering, it could actually make an injury worse as some conditions have windows in which they need to be treated to ensure optimal outcomes.
Accidents and Injuries Diagnosis
If you have been involved in an accident or have been injured at work, the first step towards a diagnosis is scheduling an appointment with a physician whose practice is focused on treating injuries arising from an accident. At the time of your appointment, they will complete a full review of your individual and family medical history; conduct a thorough physical examination and order and review any necessary diagnostic tests, such as X-Ray, MRI or CT scans. The results of these examinations and diagnostic tests will help your physician pinpoint the cause of your pain and develop a treatment plan aimed at eliminating it.
Treatment Options
If you are experiencing the signs and symptoms of pain, Pain Consultants of West Florida can help alleviate your pain and get your life back on track. We offer a wide variety of treatment options for pain resulting from injury or accidents, including:
- Massage therapy – a very popular complementary therapy that aims to use soft tissue manipulation to reduce pain and inflammation in the muscles that support the spine.
- Physical Therapy – a combination of stretching, strengthening and cardiovascular exercises aimed at strengthening the muscles around the site of injury, which can help relieve pain and allow the injury to heal.
- Bracing – certain braces can help relieve pain in injured joints by removing some of the pressure on the site of injury.
- Topical creams – Certain topical creams, particularly those that contain capsaicin, menthol or salicylates, can help provide short-term but immediate relief for acute pain.
- Injection therapy- there are a variety of injections that can be used to control acute pain, including joint injections, epidural injections, nerve blocks, and facet injections.
- TENS unit – stands for transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation and uses low-dose electrical currents, delivered through pads (electrodes) placed directly on the skin above the site of injury, to stimulate nerves and eliminate the sensation of pain.
- Knee radiofrequency ablations – a cutting-edge procedure that uses radio waves to generate heat and burn (or ablate) nerve tissue, reducing their ability to convey nerve signals. It can be used to treat knee pain resulting from acute trauma.
- Platelet-rich plasma therapy (PRP therapy) – uses a form of the patient’s own blood, which has been refined to contain a high concentration of cells called platelets. Platelets contain substances called growth factors that reduce pain and inflammation and enhance the body’s ability to heal itself.