Among the more frequent injuries that result from motor vehicle accidents are soft tissue injuries. These can happen in any accident, including a low-impact accident. Many people believe that the extent of vehicle damage has a direct relationship to the extent of the injuries to the people inside, but even low-impact fender-benders can lead to serious soft-tissue injuries, including those that can linger for years. Research has shown that even collisions with impacts of less than three miles per hour can lead to serious injuries with life-long implications.
What Are Soft Tissue Injuries?
Soft tissue injuries are those in which the connective tissue, like muscle, tendons, and ligaments between joints and bones becomes excessively strained or even tears. In many cases, nerve damage is also common, as nerve endings become strained. One of the most common examples of soft-tissue injuries is what is often known as “whiplash,” which is the name for the hyperextension-hyperflexion that happens when the vehicle passenger’s body absorbs the impact of the loss of momentum when a crash occurs. That causes the head to snap back and forth and that force can often damage the soft tissue in the neck, causing a tearing of a neck muscle or a ligament or even the herniation of a disk. In some cases, traumatic brain injuries have resulted from whiplash, if the impact of the collision is forceful enough.
Other types of soft-tissue injuries that occur often in auto accidents include severe lower back pain, or pain in various joints like elbows, hips, knees, and ankles. In many cases, victims of soft tissue injuries don’t realize it immediately; sometimes it takes days for the injured person to discover they’ve been hurt. In many cases, the pain persists, even after the initial injury has healed, especially in those cases when scar tissue around the injury creates nerve pain.
These cases can be complicated. Soft tissue injuries are often very difficult to prove using objective evidence; they are often invisible and they often don’t show up with diagnostic testing, like X-rays, or MRIs. And since pain is very subjective and is felt differently by different people, it is difficult to measure. Also, if the damage to the vehicle is minimal, it is difficult to make anyone, including insurance company adjusters or juries, believe that anyone inside the vehicle suffered any sort of serious and debilitating injury. The other side will often claim the accident victim is making things up or exaggerating to get a bigger settlement or recovery.
Though these cases are difficult, it doesn’t mean it is impossible for victims who incur soft tissue injuries to recover compensation for their pain. Since the burden will always be on the plaintiff to prove their injuries and damages were caused by the accident, it is necessary to hire an attorney experienced in these types of cases. The right attorney can evaluate the facts and the evidence in the case and bring in the right medical experts to testify as to the existence of the injury and the amount and type of pain it can cause, as well as testify as to the treatment necessary.
Corpus Christi Attorneys For Texas Soft Tissue Injuries
If you or a loved one has been in an auto accident and suffered a soft tissue injury, the Corpus Christi car accident lawyers at the Gutierrez Law Firm have the experience and the skills to help you recover the compensation you need. Contact us today for a free consultation and learn how we can help you.
