Making an Injury Claim for Whiplash

Whiplash injuries are commonly reported after car accidents and slip and fall accidents. This is because of the rapid, back and forth or side to side movement, of the head. It is common for these types of injuries to resolve on their own after a few weeks but sometimes the injuries can be permanent. For this reason, it is important to seek proper medical care after an accident involving a whiplash injury. It becomes even more important for you to seek the representation of an experienced Las Vegas personal injury attorney to guide you in the right direction in order to successfully make an injury claim for whiplash.

Filing A Whiplash Injury Claim Can Be Complex

One of the biggest pitfalls to handling whiplash injuries properly is failing to seek immediate medical attention after the accident. Although most whiplash injuries will subside on their own with conservative treatment, sometimes the injuries do not. If you do not consult with a healthcare provider shortly after the accident, you open your case up to all sorts of issues with causation. From a defense perspective, if you did not seek treatment until weeks or months after an accident, it can be argued that some other event caused your injuries. This is why most lawyers will recommend that you seek immediate medical attention for any pain or other symptoms directly after an accident. That way, the symptoms are in the record, and it will be easier for your doctors to opine to a reasonable degree of medical probability that you were injured from the accident and not some other event.

If your personal injury case involves a whiplash injury, it is important to support that claim with expert testimony. It is well-settled law in Nevada, that if you suffer from a subjective injury (one that cannot be seen with the naked eye) then you must support any claim for pain and suffering with expert opinion. What this means is that you must seek the care of a healthcare provider for your whiplash injury, since a whiplash injury cannot be seen with the naked eye. You must have that healthcare provider testify in court that they believe to a reasonable degree of medical probability you suffered this type of injury from the accident that forms the basis of your personal injury case. If the doctor is not able to do this, then you may not be able to seek full value for your case in court.

How To Treat A Whiplash Injury

The most common type of treatment for a whiplash injury is conservative treatment through chiropractic adjustments or physical therapy. Physical therapy for a whiplash injury can include electrical muscle stimulation, traction, stretching, cryotherapy, and therapeutic exercise. If your symptoms do not resolve from this type of treatment, then you will likely be evaluated by a pain management doctor, a neurosurgeon, or a spine surgeon. They may recommend that you undergo an MRI or other diagnostic studies to determine the exact source of your pain. MRI’s can be very helpful in discovering disc injuries. Another method of diagnosing disc injuries is through the use of steroid injections to see if your pain is alleviated after the procedure. If it is, then that means your doctor found the right disc level that was damaged. From there they may recommend more invasive procedures, including but not limited to a rhizotomy, discectomy, discogram, or spinal fusion. These are all procedures that required general anesthesia and will possibly have major effects on your activities of daily living.

It is therefore important to consult with the best possible surgeons before even considering these invasive options. However, from a legal standpoint, these types of procedures can increase the value of your case exponentially.

Contact Our Law firm

Retaining an experienced whiplash injury lawyer to guide you through this process is paramount to a successful claim involving whiplash. A good attorney will be able to send you to the right doctors from the start, even if you do not have adequate medical insurance. If you have been injured in an accident, you should contact attorney Brian Boyer for a free in-person consultation. As a reminder, we make house calls.

Related: Do I Need An Attorney For A Car Accident?

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• Common Car Accident Injuries