Nerve Damage From Auto Injury Somerville

Do you ever wonder why some people suffer from a serious auto injury while others walk away unscathed? 

One of the most difficult injuries to heal is a nerve injury – whether it’s in an auto injury or not. At a hospital neurosurgery department in New Hampshire, one doctor started a complete investigation of nerve injuries. He analyzed 384,539 adult medical records who were in a collision between 2009 and 2011. The records were accessible via the National Trauma Data Base.

Of all these patients, 3086 had experienced a nerve injury, causing signs and symptoms such as pain, numbness, tingling and radiating pain that can be incapacitating, as well as muscle weakness. You may understand a nerve injury better by thinking of what it feels like to have a toothache – how the pain radiates to the nearby tissues. Another example is sciatica where the pain radiates down the back of the leg to the foot. The pain is following the entire course of the nerve.

In an auto injury that involves the nerves, the researcher found that seatbelts protected people from nerve injuries. Where a person was sitting in the car when the auto injury occurred didn’t matter at all; the person could be driving or not.

One thing that did increase the risk of a nerve injury was alcohol consumption. If the person in the car had been drinking, they had a greater chance of developing injuries to the nerves of the arms and legs (the peripheral nerves of the body).This is one of alcohol’s little-known effects on the body.

Somerville Auto Injury Care

The good news is that as chiropractor, Dr. Cordima treats injured nerves (auto injury and otherwise) with effective, non-invasive methods that have helped hundreds of patients in Somerville, MA. Call Cordima Chiropractic find out how seeing a chiropractor can help you start feeling better today!

Reference

Bekelis, K., Missios, S., and Spinner, R.J. Restraints and peripheral nerve injuries in adult victims of motor vehicle crashes. Journal of Neurotrauma 2014.