Recovery after whiplash
According to research presented at the World Congress on Neck Pain in Los Angeles, the initial level of pain after a
whiplash injury, as well as psychological factors such as having positive expectations for getting better, best predict who will recover quickly from whiplash.
Whiplash is an injury to the neck that usually occurs because of sudden extension and forced flexing of muscles, tendons and ligaments, and occur usually after a car accident. Most whiplash victims recover in a few months, but many report recurring pain a year or more later. It is one of the most widely reported injuries that are reported to
insurance companies.
David Walton, a researcher, presented findings at the World Congress where he opined that whether an accident victim recovers from the pain of whiplash or not, is strongly dependent on the level of pain three weeks after the whiplash injury occurred. He reviewed 14 published studies including more than 3,000 whiplash patients and presented his findings at the Congress.
Research in Sweden suggests that a person's expectations of recovery from whiplash are very important in the recovery process. Lena Holm, DrMedSc, a research fellow at the Institute of Environmental Medicine at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, evaluated the recovery expectations of more than 1,000 insurance claimants who filed a
neck injury claim after a car collision to one of two insurance companies in Sweden in a year.
Three weeks after the injury, Holm and her team of colleagues asked the claimants how likely they felt they would recover fully. At six months, they compared the disability level of the participants with expectations. Believing they could recover was very important with those that felt positive more likely to recover as compared to those that didn’t falling into a category where they were adjudged to be more than four times as likely to be in the group of participants whose disability was at a much more advanced stage.
The findings may not please critics of whiplash injury claims who often suggest that most claims are exaggerated and overblown in an effort to gain a higher level of compensation. If whiplash injuries are shown more to be based around state of mind than actual injury, then the likelihood of constantly high payouts will no doubt be constricted.
Wearing a neck collar to immobilise the injured area after whiplash injury had no discernible effect in the opinion of Sylvia Schick, MD, MPH, a researcher at the Institute for Legal Medicine at Ludwig Maximilians Universitat in Munich, Germany.
Using the data base of a large insurance company in Germany, Schick and her colleagues compared the results of 31 whiplash patients treated without a neck collar and 40 with the neck collar. No differences were found between groups in reports of neck pain or stiffness, she says.
If you have suffered a whiplash injury, it is important that you seek medical advice as soon as possible following a whiplash injury by either visiting your doctor or the Accident and Emergency department of your local hospital. Medical records of your whiplash injury are likely to be used as evidence to support your claim, so it will help if you see a medical expert as soon as possible following your accident.
Updated on 29/06/2008