A major problem with accident cases involving spinal injuries concerns the process of differentiating traumatic injury from other types of gradual wear and tear on the body that can have similar symptoms, manifest in similar ways and exacerbate one another. Experienced injury lawyers know that there’s always the challenge of identifying a cause-and-effect chain with respect to spinal health conditions and they look closely at whether a traumatic impact had a significant influence on such conditions.
The Difficulty With Diagnosing Cervical Pain From Degeneration and Injury
Spine-Health.com provides some clues as to the difficulty of directly diagnosing and treating traumatic impact of the spine. The article first discusses how certain parts of the spine can be damaged and cause cervical pain after traumatic impact. It goes into detail about these injuries, but also provides this disclaimer: “A full review of cervical fractures is beyond the scope of this article.” The article also discusses another clue with respect to the relationship of traumatic impact of the spine and natural aging conditions, stating “It should be noted that trauma to cervical vertebrae occurs less often than cervical pain and other symptoms resulting from changes that occur with aging, such as the development of bone spurs in the neck and cervical osteoarthritis.” The article then goes on to describe bone spurs and symptoms.
Symptoms include:
• Back pain
• Weakness in the arms and legs
• Neck pain
• Headaches
Reading resources like the one mentioned above, it becomes abundantly clear that there is often a close similarity between traumatic injury symptoms and symptoms of other chronic spinal problems. For example, the article also points out that having bone spurs does not mean that those bone spurs are responsible for pain and symptoms. In a review of conditions like cervical osteoarthritis, the article talks about other types of pain, such as pain below the shoulder blades and pain that comes and goes throughout the day.
Why is All This Important to Accident Victims?
First of all, it is important for injury victims to get quick, accurate and unbiased medical evaluations. It is also important for medical professionals to fully document any injuries that occurred. But it is also important to get good legal counsel in order to try to prove that an impact really did make a difference in the injury victim’s health. Without qualified counsel, those who are bringing these types of personal injury cases can be confronted with very complex issues with respect to the nature of injury, statute of limitations, doctor testimony and much more. One of the reasons for this is due to those very nebulous characteristics of injury outcomes, as it often becomes difficult to tell a sudden, quick injury from the symptoms of aging or chronic degeneration. If you’ve been injured, talk to the experienced New York City spinal cord injury lawyers at Rosenberg, Minc, Falkoff & Wolff. We help area residents get their voices heard in local courts and access all of their rights under the law.
