How Often Do Soft Tissue Injuries Become Chronic?
Car accidents can cause all kinds of injuries to drivers and passengers alike. Some of those injuries don’t present themselves immediately after the collision, though. It can take days, or even weeks, for some people to feel the pain of an injury from a car accident. This can delay the treatment that a car accident victim receives for their injuries and can cause the injury to get worse over time and could even lead to it taking even longer to heal.
When your injuries were the result of a car accident that wasn’t your fault, you shouldn’t be responsible for paying for the costs related to the injuries. With the help of a Baltimore car accident lawyer from Belsky & Horowitz, LLC, you can have peace of mind knowing that you have experienced legal representation who will ensure that you get the compensation you deserve for your damages.
What Is a Soft Tissue Injury?
While soft tissue injuries most commonly happen while playing sports, or even accidentally rolling an ankle while walking on a flat surface, car accidents can also cause soft tissue injuries for a person. Soft tissue injuries are better known as sprains, strains, and contusions, or bruises. The symptoms of a soft tissue injury are pain, swelling, and bruising, but sometimes the shock from a car accident can mask those symptoms, and so they are not apparent until days or weeks later.
When looking into soft tissue injuries and how they can become chronic, it’s important to look at the grade of the injury, which is how severe the soft tissue injury is and how much soft tissue is damaged. Grade I is the mildest level, affects only 10% of the tissue, and usually heals within a few days of the injury with proper treatment. Most soft tissue injuries are Grade I and will heal easily. Grades II and III are rarer and are the injury levels that are more at risk for developing into chronic injuries.
In a Grade II level soft tissue injury, up to 90% of the muscle or ligament is torn and requires healing for weeks. If the treatment plan isn’t followed closely with a Grade II, then they could permanently damage the tissue and have chronic pain as a result.
A Grade III level soft tissue injury is similar to Grade II, but more severe. In a Grade III injury, there is a complete tear in the muscle or ligament, and typically it requires surgery to repair. Patients may even require to be put in a cast for an extended period of time to keep weight off the injury, and it could take months to heal. However, there is a chance that it could never fully heal, and lead to chronic pain.
Seek Immediate Treatment to Prevent Chronic Injury
Even if you don’t think you’re injured immediately following an accident, it’s still important to get medical treatment because your injuries could be more severe than you realize. The faster you can follow a treatment plan, the better chances you have at making a full recovery from your injuries.
Unfortunately, soft tissue injuries are hard to detect, so even if you do seek immediate treatment, your doctor might not be able to see your injuries. But when you get examined immediately, and then come back later with the same symptoms, you have better chances at your injury being discovered and properly treated so that you can heal. This documentation can also help you later if you choose to file a personal injury claim.
Visit a doctor immediately following your suspected injury and keep returning for treatment if the pain persists. The documentation of these visits will help your claim because they prove that you were feeling pain, had an injury, and were following treatment plans. But if you don’t seek treatment right away, don’t follow treatment plans, and ignore your injury, not only could it worsen the damage done to your body, but it could also diminish the amount of compensation you could win.
Belsky & Horowitz, LLC Will Represent You
When you’ve been in a car accident that caused damage to your physical, emotional, and financial well-being, you shouldn’t be the one responsible for paying for those damages. Hiring a Baltimore car accident lawyer from Belsky & Horowitz, LLC will enable you to fight for your rights and ensure that you get full and fair compensation for the damages that you suffered.
Our experience in these cases will benefit you—we know to fully investigate your claim and how to build the strongest possible case to maximize your compensation. Contact us today so we can discuss your potential claim and get you on the road to financial recovery.
