How To Tell If Your Spine Is Stable After An Auto Accident

chiropractor examining spinal x-ray

Looking for an auto accident chiropractor in central Vancouver, Washington?

Then you will be interested in this post where Dr. Troy Dreiling discusses the methods he uses to determine how stable your spine is after you’ve been in an auto accident or had other serious injuries.

In addition to accepting most insurances for chiropractic care, we employ an insurance specialist who will help you with your paperwork and claim forms.

We offer a free consultation, which you can schedule by calling us at our Vancouver, Washington office at 360-260-6903.


 

 

Video Transcription: How We Test To See If Your Spine Is Stable After An Accident

This is Dr. Troy from Zenaptic Chiropractic.

I get this question a lot: Is my spinal injury stable or do I have a permanent impairment or weakness in my spine and soft tissue.

Our office is best equipped to determine this, are you stable or are you not? There are a couple of ways to determine this. One is through history and the other is through our examination process.

After we’ve completed a course of corrective care for someone who is in a motor vehicle accident, whether it’s a massage, adjustment or through some of the spinal rehab procedures that we use.

We see great success in getting people back to pre-injury status but sometimes there can be an underlying inherent weakness due to the mechanism of injury that you might have been involved with.

One of the things we do is a lateral motion side neck x-ray. We have the patient take a neutral film, then we have them flex forward and then we have then extend back.

Each joint in the cervical spine, in the neck, has a certain range of motion. We know if two segments are moving more than 7 degrees you have too much movement going on. Anything over 11 degrees of motion now becomes a permanent spinal disability.

You can rate that as a whole person impairment which predisposes you to chronic pain down the road as well as arthritis, degenerative disc issues, and neurological issues.

It’s very good to document this in the file so you best know how to take care of yourself moving forward.

If there are any medical-legal issues going on, this can help build value for your case so that you are entitled to a higher settlement because you are predisposed to more pain and suffering down the road.

Even if you aren’t a patient of ours and you want to have an evaluation of the motion x-ray done, we do that.

We work with attorneys and third parties to help evaluate and manage spinal injuries so that you can get back on track and resolve your health issues.

We do a free consultation to determine if chiropractic is right for you. We can discuss your case and see if we have some solutions to help you get your health back.

This is Dr. Troy, Zenaptic Chiropractic on the corner of Andresen and Fourth Plain.