Frequently Asked Questions:
Q1. Why do some people heal quickly while others take a long time?
A1. This is a good question. Experts say some big factors may be out of our control, such as genetics (the same physical gifts that make a person faster or stronger by speed recovery, too).
Other factors that can prolong healing time are medical conditions, physical condition, such as height and weight, prior injuries, and age. These are all relevant factors in assessing normal recovery time from a musculoskeletal injury. Research conducted by the University of North Carolina, Department of anesthesiology suggests that it will take you longer to recover from an injury sustained in an auto accident if you are carrying around extra weight. Researchers discovered that the heavier a patient was, the more likely they were to report pain. The pattern was initially noted after the immediate onset of the injury as well as at the six and 12-month follow-ups.
The location of an injury has a big impact on the time it takes to heal from said injury. Chest wall muscles are involved in breathing, back and neck muscles are involved in sustaining postural stability and controlling the body and head movement. These muscles take longer to heal as they have little time to rest. Different tissues regenerate at different rates. As a rule of thumb, the greater the blood supply to the tissue the quicker the recovery time. Muscles will heal quicker than tendons, and tendons will heal quicker than ligaments.
Age; there is little doubt that aging negatively affects the recovery process and is responsible for an overall reduction in muscle mass. Recent research has shown that transplanted muscle heals at the rate associated with the age of the recipient and not the donor. As we age muscle fibers decrease in number and shrink in size. New muscle fibers are generated at a slower rate than in a younger person, resulting in a slower buildup and strengthening of muscle in response to the demands of an injury. At West Pine Medical and Florissant Medical, the number of treatments is determined by the medical doctor and the patient. We don’t have a set number of treatments because we know that not only is each accident different, but each person is different, and each injury is different.
Q2. Why did it take me a day or two to feel pain?
A2. An auto accident is a traumatic event. After an auto accident, your body will generate adrenaline and endorphins, which make you feel increased energy and (possibly) a lack of pain. It does so as a response to the accident. Once the release of those chemicals subside, the pain from the injuries you sustained in the accident will start to surface. Another common pitfall is the fact that pain medications prescribed after an accident may mask underlying problems.
Q3. How did I get hurt from a low-impact collision?
A3. For this answer, I would like to refer to an article by Ray C. Estabrook.
Who is Ray C. Estabrook? He was an insurance claims adjuster while he was working on his Doctor of Jurisprudence degree. He has more than 35 years of personal injury experience and 13 years working with the insurance industry. Ray stated the following: “While I would not recommend trying this at home, at least, picture in your mind one of today’s automobiles, composed primarily of light-weight metal, plastic, and glass, being hit by a 1955 Chevy, a vehicle basically built out of cast iron, and guess which vehicle, and its occupants, survive! You will be lucky to even find all of the bits and pieces of today’s "safer" car.
For the most part - and with the exception of seatbelts, airbags and certain kinds of headrests - the "safety improvements" of today’s vehicles, such as "impact absorbing" bumpers, have little, or nothing to do with occupant safety. They are the result of intense insurance industry lobbying of the auto manufacturers to reduce auto repair costs by replacing expensive cast metal parts with cheaper disposable lightweight metal and plastic components that crush, or give way, easily upon impact and can be more economically replaced, or exchanged out, when damaged rather than having to be physically repaired. In other words, the purpose of devices, such as the "impact absorbing" plastic bumper, is to save insurance companies money, not save the vehicle’s occupants!
A further word or two on those "impact absorbing" bumpers: They do not "absorb" the impact, or the energy generated by a collision at all. First, they generally are built to "absorb" only a five-mile-per-hour impact. Second, a five mile per hour impact will, typically, crush their interior "impact-absorbing" plastic material rendering them incapable of absorbing any energy generated by an impact in excess of five-miles-per-hour. Third, scientific impact studies seem to indicate that whatever energy is generated by a collision is not truly "absorbed", or "stopped", by the "impact absorbing" bumper at all but, rather, is transmitted forward where, after being multiplied several times, it is, ultimately, absorbed by the vehicle’s occupant(s)! So much for "impact-absorbing" bumpers. Bottom line: "impact absorbing" bumpers, don’t absorb impact!”
Now you may be wondering what that means. In simplest terms, the bumper and other aspects of the vehicle will not absorb the full impact, they will absorb part of the impact. The rest of the impact is felt by the occupant(s). When an object is in motion, it will stay in motion until acted upon by another object. This is due to inertia. Inertia illustrates Newton's 1st law of an object in motion will stay in motion until an outside force acts on it. When a vehicle is hit by another vehicle, the vehicle will potentially move one way, but since you were traveling in a straight path with the car, your body is still travelling in a straight path when the vehicle is struck. Since your body is travelling in one direction while your vehicle is traveling in a different direction, you experience whiplash as a result of the different directions of motion between you and your vehicle.
Q4. What is Whiplash?
A4. Here is a brief description. A stopped car is struck by another vehicle from behind; the struck car is thrown forward, but so are the passengers. Specifically, the torso of a passenger is thrown forward with the car while the head of a passenger lags behind for a fraction of a second. This abrupt motion causes their neck to be hyper-extended (unduly strained due to the torso flying forward while the head stays behind). As their torsos rebound against the seat, their heads now fly forward, but are snapped back again by their necks, and overshoot the torso. This motion, once again, causes the neck to be hyper-extended. This effect is most severe if the headrests are too low and set too far back, as they are in many cars. The whole occurrence takes less than a second. Although the person experiencing this situation does not have overt signs of injury, the possible occurrence of soft tissue damage to the overstretched ligaments of the neck has been well documented.
Another study stated the following: unfortunately, the effects of whiplash are often downplayed, and its victim is thought to be malingering, on the grounds that injury isn’t visible. With whiplash, the force to the neck is violent and sudden; it is not filtered through the neck musculature. Hence, those with thinner or weakened necks (i.e. women and those who have had prior neck injuries) are more prone to experience the effects of whiplash. The effects can occur from an impact to the car as low as 3G’s. A problem facing investigators of a whiplash cases is that the impact velocity of the striking (rear) car is typically not known with certainty, and this value is critical when determining the resulting forces. A conservative estimate of the speed can be surmised by using the damage threshold of the cars’ bumpers. This is because whiplash injury is caused by low-speed impacts involving little to no damage to the bumpers. Question 3 elaborates on the function and construction of bumpers and why they aren't entirely efficient in "absorbing" the energy from a crash. That provides further causation to why most of the shock is transmitted to a passenger's neck. Testing has shown the damage threshold of bumpers for many cars is about 5 mph meaning a bumper is only good for low impact accidents. That leaves the neck vulnerable to whiplash and its effects in accidents that exceed that 5mph threshold. However, most crash testing involves the car impacting a rigid barrier, which does not yield in any way, rather than a relatively flexible bumper of another car. Hence, the crash testing can be more severe than an actual impact with another car, and can, in fact, be equivalent to the car’s being struck with another car at up to twice the velocity used for the barrier test.
Testing has shown that the maximum loading to a rear-ended car was amplified about two and a half times when it reached the heads of the occupants. The testing also revealed that this occurred about a fourth of a second after impact.
Q5. What is the statue of limitations for suing after a car accident?
A5. This is a legal question and something we cannot answer. You should contact a personal injury attorney for any legal questions. Our main focus at West Pine Medical and Florissant Medical is to get you feeling better.
Q6. Should I see a medical doctor after an automobile wreck?
A6. It is a good idea if you are injured to see a medical doctor within 72 hours. Some patients attempt self medication such as heating pads, hot bath and pain killers. After a week or two they realize they could use better medical care. At West Pine Medical and Florissant Medical the physicians use the full range of physical medicine modalities like Intersegmental Traction Table, Therapeutic Ultrasound, Massage Therapy, Electric Muscle Stimulation, Diathermy, Therapeutic Exercise for strengthening, mobilization and other various accepted treatment modalities. If you try to treat yourself first, be sure to let your medical doctor know so they can include that in their report.
Q7. How long will I receive treatment?
A7. Not all people or accidents are the same. The first step is to be diagnosed by a medical doctor. Depending on the “Initial Examination”, the medical doctor may send you out for X-rays, an MRI or suggest treatments such as Intersegmental Traction, Therapeutic Ultrasound, Massage Therapy, Electric Muscle Stimulation, Diathermy, Therapeutic Exercises for strengthening and mobilization, and various other accepted treatment modalities. The treatments that the medical doctor recommends are based on your specific type of the injury and the location of the injury. You will meet with the medical doctor on each visit to discuss if any changes in your treatment modalities are required. The doctor will also review your medication if necessary. If the medical doctor observes that the modalities are not improving your condition, he/she may request that you receive an MRI, or X-ray, or visit a neurologist, or orthopedic surgeon. About 90% of the patients we treat have their pain resolved at West Pine Medical and Florissant Medical. However, about 10% require more than soft tissue modalities. They may require a cast for a broken bone, surgery, or pain management for a herniated disc. A few patients have required psychological help after an automobile accident. Once again, not everybody is the same. We have had patients who only had one visit and other patients who have required more than 20 visits due to the degree of their injuries. People who work at a physically demanding job, lifting and moving objects, may take longer to heal than somebody who sits at a desk or has a lighter workload. The age and physical shape of the patient can also add to the equation. There are a lot of factors. The bottom line is: your medical doctor at West Pine Medical and Florissant Medical, along with you, work together to get you feeling better, quicker.
Q8. What type of doctors are on staff at West Pine Medical and Florissant Medical?
A8. All of our doctors are medical doctors, listed with the “Missouri Division of Professional Registration” under “Physicians & Surgeons.”
Q9. What type of background do our doctors have?
A9. At this practice we have a semi-retired orthopedic surgeon and a medical doctor that worked in sports medicine.
Both doctors focus on soft-tissue injuries at West Pine Medical and Florissant Medical.
Q10. What type of treatments do you perform in your office?
A10. The most popular treatments performed here include: Electric Muscle Stimulation, Diathermy, Massage, Intersegmental Traction Table, and Ultrasound. We'd would like to elaborate on Ultrasound. There are two different types of Ultrasounds. One is for imaging which uses high-frequency sound waves to view inside the body. That's typically what people think about first since it is commonly used for pregnant women. The type of Ultrasound that we perform is therapeutic Ultrasound. It is different from the diagnostic ultrasound in terms of it's use and purpose. The procedure is very similar to imaging ultrasound. We have a transducer that is placed directly on the skin. A thin layer of ultrasonic gel is applied to the skin so that the ultrasound waves are transmitted from the transducer through the gel into the body. Instead of the ultrasound sending back an image, the sound waves deliver deep heat to damaged tissue. This is also why the gel is important, it keeps the skin protected from the heat the ultrasound emits. This type of treatment will assist in reducing stiffness, swelling, and pain, while increase circulation and promoting pain-free movement.
Q1. Why do some people heal quickly while others take a long time?
A1. This is a good question. Experts say some big factors may be out of our control, such as genetics (the same physical gifts that make a person faster or stronger by speed recovery, too).
Other factors that can prolong healing time are medical conditions, physical condition, such as height and weight, prior injuries, and age. These are all relevant factors in assessing normal recovery time from a musculoskeletal injury. Research conducted by the University of North Carolina, Department of anesthesiology suggests that it will take you longer to recover from an injury sustained in an auto accident if you are carrying around extra weight. Researchers discovered that the heavier a patient was, the more likely they were to report pain. The pattern was initially noted after the immediate onset of the injury as well as at the six and 12-month follow-ups.
The location of an injury has a big impact on the time it takes to heal from said injury. Chest wall muscles are involved in breathing, back and neck muscles are involved in sustaining postural stability and controlling the body and head movement. These muscles take longer to heal as they have little time to rest. Different tissues regenerate at different rates. As a rule of thumb, the greater the blood supply to the tissue the quicker the recovery time. Muscles will heal quicker than tendons, and tendons will heal quicker than ligaments.
Age; there is little doubt that aging negatively affects the recovery process and is responsible for an overall reduction in muscle mass. Recent research has shown that transplanted muscle heals at the rate associated with the age of the recipient and not the donor. As we age muscle fibers decrease in number and shrink in size. New muscle fibers are generated at a slower rate than in a younger person, resulting in a slower buildup and strengthening of muscle in response to the demands of an injury. At West Pine Medical and Florissant Medical, the number of treatments is determined by the medical doctor and the patient. We don’t have a set number of treatments because we know that not only is each accident different, but each person is different, and each injury is different.
Q2. Why did it take me a day or two to feel pain?
A2. An auto accident is a traumatic event. After an auto accident, your body will generate adrenaline and endorphins, which make you feel increased energy and (possibly) a lack of pain. It does so as a response to the accident. Once the release of those chemicals subside, the pain from the injuries you sustained in the accident will start to surface. Another common pitfall is the fact that pain medications prescribed after an accident may mask underlying problems.
Q3. How did I get hurt from a low-impact collision?
A3. For this answer, I would like to refer to an article by Ray C. Estabrook.
Who is Ray C. Estabrook? He was an insurance claims adjuster while he was working on his Doctor of Jurisprudence degree. He has more than 35 years of personal injury experience and 13 years working with the insurance industry. Ray stated the following: “While I would not recommend trying this at home, at least, picture in your mind one of today’s automobiles, composed primarily of light-weight metal, plastic, and glass, being hit by a 1955 Chevy, a vehicle basically built out of cast iron, and guess which vehicle, and its occupants, survive! You will be lucky to even find all of the bits and pieces of today’s "safer" car.
For the most part - and with the exception of seatbelts, airbags and certain kinds of headrests - the "safety improvements" of today’s vehicles, such as "impact absorbing" bumpers, have little, or nothing to do with occupant safety. They are the result of intense insurance industry lobbying of the auto manufacturers to reduce auto repair costs by replacing expensive cast metal parts with cheaper disposable lightweight metal and plastic components that crush, or give way, easily upon impact and can be more economically replaced, or exchanged out, when damaged rather than having to be physically repaired. In other words, the purpose of devices, such as the "impact absorbing" plastic bumper, is to save insurance companies money, not save the vehicle’s occupants!
A further word or two on those "impact absorbing" bumpers: They do not "absorb" the impact, or the energy generated by a collision at all. First, they generally are built to "absorb" only a five-mile-per-hour impact. Second, a five mile per hour impact will, typically, crush their interior "impact-absorbing" plastic material rendering them incapable of absorbing any energy generated by an impact in excess of five-miles-per-hour. Third, scientific impact studies seem to indicate that whatever energy is generated by a collision is not truly "absorbed", or "stopped", by the "impact absorbing" bumper at all but, rather, is transmitted forward where, after being multiplied several times, it is, ultimately, absorbed by the vehicle’s occupant(s)! So much for "impact-absorbing" bumpers. Bottom line: "impact absorbing" bumpers, don’t absorb impact!”
Now you may be wondering what that means. In simplest terms, the bumper and other aspects of the vehicle will not absorb the full impact, they will absorb part of the impact. The rest of the impact is felt by the occupant(s). When an object is in motion, it will stay in motion until acted upon by another object. This is due to inertia. Inertia illustrates Newton's 1st law of an object in motion will stay in motion until an outside force acts on it. When a vehicle is hit by another vehicle, the vehicle will potentially move one way, but since you were traveling in a straight path with the car, your body is still travelling in a straight path when the vehicle is struck. Since your body is travelling in one direction while your vehicle is traveling in a different direction, you experience whiplash as a result of the different directions of motion between you and your vehicle.
Q4. What is Whiplash?
A4. Here is a brief description. A stopped car is struck by another vehicle from behind; the struck car is thrown forward, but so are the passengers. Specifically, the torso of a passenger is thrown forward with the car while the head of a passenger lags behind for a fraction of a second. This abrupt motion causes their neck to be hyper-extended (unduly strained due to the torso flying forward while the head stays behind). As their torsos rebound against the seat, their heads now fly forward, but are snapped back again by their necks, and overshoot the torso. This motion, once again, causes the neck to be hyper-extended. This effect is most severe if the headrests are too low and set too far back, as they are in many cars. The whole occurrence takes less than a second. Although the person experiencing this situation does not have overt signs of injury, the possible occurrence of soft tissue damage to the overstretched ligaments of the neck has been well documented.
Another study stated the following: unfortunately, the effects of whiplash are often downplayed, and its victim is thought to be malingering, on the grounds that injury isn’t visible. With whiplash, the force to the neck is violent and sudden; it is not filtered through the neck musculature. Hence, those with thinner or weakened necks (i.e. women and those who have had prior neck injuries) are more prone to experience the effects of whiplash. The effects can occur from an impact to the car as low as 3G’s. A problem facing investigators of a whiplash cases is that the impact velocity of the striking (rear) car is typically not known with certainty, and this value is critical when determining the resulting forces. A conservative estimate of the speed can be surmised by using the damage threshold of the cars’ bumpers. This is because whiplash injury is caused by low-speed impacts involving little to no damage to the bumpers. Question 3 elaborates on the function and construction of bumpers and why they aren't entirely efficient in "absorbing" the energy from a crash. That provides further causation to why most of the shock is transmitted to a passenger's neck. Testing has shown the damage threshold of bumpers for many cars is about 5 mph meaning a bumper is only good for low impact accidents. That leaves the neck vulnerable to whiplash and its effects in accidents that exceed that 5mph threshold. However, most crash testing involves the car impacting a rigid barrier, which does not yield in any way, rather than a relatively flexible bumper of another car. Hence, the crash testing can be more severe than an actual impact with another car, and can, in fact, be equivalent to the car’s being struck with another car at up to twice the velocity used for the barrier test.
Testing has shown that the maximum loading to a rear-ended car was amplified about two and a half times when it reached the heads of the occupants. The testing also revealed that this occurred about a fourth of a second after impact.
Q5. What is the statue of limitations for suing after a car accident?
A5. This is a legal question and something we cannot answer. You should contact a personal injury attorney for any legal questions. Our main focus at West Pine Medical and Florissant Medical is to get you feeling better.
Q6. Should I see a medical doctor after an automobile wreck?
A6. It is a good idea if you are injured to see a medical doctor within 72 hours. Some patients attempt self medication such as heating pads, hot bath and pain killers. After a week or two they realize they could use better medical care. At West Pine Medical and Florissant Medical the physicians use the full range of physical medicine modalities like Intersegmental Traction Table, Therapeutic Ultrasound, Massage Therapy, Electric Muscle Stimulation, Diathermy, Therapeutic Exercise for strengthening, mobilization and other various accepted treatment modalities. If you try to treat yourself first, be sure to let your medical doctor know so they can include that in their report.
Q7. How long will I receive treatment?
A7. Not all people or accidents are the same. The first step is to be diagnosed by a medical doctor. Depending on the “Initial Examination”, the medical doctor may send you out for X-rays, an MRI or suggest treatments such as Intersegmental Traction, Therapeutic Ultrasound, Massage Therapy, Electric Muscle Stimulation, Diathermy, Therapeutic Exercises for strengthening and mobilization, and various other accepted treatment modalities. The treatments that the medical doctor recommends are based on your specific type of the injury and the location of the injury. You will meet with the medical doctor on each visit to discuss if any changes in your treatment modalities are required. The doctor will also review your medication if necessary. If the medical doctor observes that the modalities are not improving your condition, he/she may request that you receive an MRI, or X-ray, or visit a neurologist, or orthopedic surgeon. About 90% of the patients we treat have their pain resolved at West Pine Medical and Florissant Medical. However, about 10% require more than soft tissue modalities. They may require a cast for a broken bone, surgery, or pain management for a herniated disc. A few patients have required psychological help after an automobile accident. Once again, not everybody is the same. We have had patients who only had one visit and other patients who have required more than 20 visits due to the degree of their injuries. People who work at a physically demanding job, lifting and moving objects, may take longer to heal than somebody who sits at a desk or has a lighter workload. The age and physical shape of the patient can also add to the equation. There are a lot of factors. The bottom line is: your medical doctor at West Pine Medical and Florissant Medical, along with you, work together to get you feeling better, quicker.
Q8. What type of doctors are on staff at West Pine Medical and Florissant Medical?
A8. All of our doctors are medical doctors, listed with the “Missouri Division of Professional Registration” under “Physicians & Surgeons.”
Q9. What type of background do our doctors have?
A9. At this practice we have a semi-retired orthopedic surgeon and a medical doctor that worked in sports medicine.
Both doctors focus on soft-tissue injuries at West Pine Medical and Florissant Medical.
Q10. What type of treatments do you perform in your office?
A10. The most popular treatments performed here include: Electric Muscle Stimulation, Diathermy, Massage, Intersegmental Traction Table, and Ultrasound. We'd would like to elaborate on Ultrasound. There are two different types of Ultrasounds. One is for imaging which uses high-frequency sound waves to view inside the body. That's typically what people think about first since it is commonly used for pregnant women. The type of Ultrasound that we perform is therapeutic Ultrasound. It is different from the diagnostic ultrasound in terms of it's use and purpose. The procedure is very similar to imaging ultrasound. We have a transducer that is placed directly on the skin. A thin layer of ultrasonic gel is applied to the skin so that the ultrasound waves are transmitted from the transducer through the gel into the body. Instead of the ultrasound sending back an image, the sound waves deliver deep heat to damaged tissue. This is also why the gel is important, it keeps the skin protected from the heat the ultrasound emits. This type of treatment will assist in reducing stiffness, swelling, and pain, while increase circulation and promoting pain-free movement.