Vancouver chiropractor Dr. Troy Dreiling explains how long you should consider chiropractic care after being injured in an auto collision. He also shares the scope of treatment for helping determine when you can return to normal activity.
If you’ve been injured in an auto accident, chiropractic care may help. We encourage you to call us for a free consultation.
Our insurance specialist will assist you with your insurance coverage for your chiropractic care, so you can focus on getting well again.
Video Transcription: Returning To Pre-Injury Status After An Auto Accident
Dr. Troy, talking about returning to pre-injury status before settling your automobile injury case.
I can’t tell you how many times I see a patient and tell them 6 – 12 weeks of care to best resolve your injuries is the norm for getting you stable from a motor vehicle accident.
Case Study
I recently had a lady who came to the office. She came for three visits and said, “Oh, I’m fine.”
She just returned [to our office] after four months with even more severe headaches and neck pain, but now she has tingling in her arms.
I asked her why she stopped coming and she said she thought she was fine.
She never let us evaluate her and she never let us re-evaluate her. There are a couple of things that we monitor to see if you are stable from an accident.
Range Of Motion Tests
One of the classic things we do is a computerized range of motion. We’ll take your neck through a series of motions; side to side, up and down, front and back.
We can actually put a degree on how well you’re tipping your head to the side.
If you came in, for example, and you could only tip to the side 20 degrees, now you’re 30 degrees, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re stable, although you feel fine.
The goal is to get you to the max range of motion. For example it would be 45 degrees to the side. Those are one of the tests we do.
Orthopedic Tests
We also do orthopedic tests. We do neurological evaluations to determine if the soft tissue is stable.
Even though you may not be hurting, you can still have an underlying weakness that is going to predispose you to problems down the road.
I always encourage patients to follow through with care. Let us do the progress evaluations to determine if you are stable or not.
X-Rays
The other thing we like to do is post x-rays at the end. We can actually measure the ligaments to see if they are unstable.
A lot of people feel fine, think they are 100 percent after eight or twelve weeks of care. We do an underlying motion x-ray study and measure it to the degree and we find they have spinal instability.
This means down the road it can predispose them to chronic degenerative arthritic conditions which can cause suffering for the rest of their life.
Summary
These are good things to note and have in your file so you know where you are at. That’s our own mission at Zenaptic Chiropractic; to make sure you are stable and long-term -you’re okay.
We have a team of doctors and massage therapists and even legal help that can help you regain your status as a healthy normal person even after a severe motor vehicle collision.
This is Dr. Troy here to help from Zenaptic Chiropractic.
