How To Get Proper Pain Management Treatment Following An Accident

After you’ve been involved in a work-related or car accident, you might experience immediate pain, or a few delayed symptoms. While such minor symptoms can last for a few weeks or so, sometimes these accidents can be more serious than you think. If you’re still in pain for months or years after an injury, your current therapy alone might not be enough.

WHAT IS IT?

This is where pain management treatment following an accident comes in handy—to expedite the healing process and provide stronger resources. Pain management often consists of medications and injections to accompany chiropractic care, physical therapy, and perhaps other alternative therapies, such as acupuncture.

All together, these more aggressive treatments will create a complete, pain management strategy that will discover why the current treatment plan isn’t working and find the root of the problem. Once the source is identified, the practitioner can then optimize therapy, tailored to your given areas.

HOW DO YOU ISOLATE THE PAIN?

The doctor will often use injections (such as facet joint and epidural steroid injections) and medication to reduce local inflammation and swelling. With less inflammation in the body, pain should subside long enough to undergo more rigorous treatment in chiropractic care and physical therapy.

Often times a fluoroscopy or X-ray is used to directly pinpoint the location of the injection, to boost the medication’s effectiveness. Once the source of pain is located, the doctor will know what type of pain it is and how best to treat it.

WHERE DOES THE PAIN COME FROM?

There are various causes of pain after a car or work accident, and they can vary in severity, duration, and prevalence. While some can heal quickly, those that require more intensive care often take much longer.

For instance, nociceptive pain might be from a broken bone, neuropathic pain is related to nervous system damage, such as shingles, and radicular pain could be associated with herniated disks following a car or work accident. These types of pain often need pain management therapy, along with medications and injections, to speed recovery.

WHY THIS MATTERS

If your symptoms aren’t healing, and you refuse to seek further treatment, you could be stuck with chronic, debilitating pain for the rest of your life. Work and auto accident can hit you hard, but with the right recovery plan, you should be able to heal. If you’re not, your current treatment after an accident isn’t enough.

Chiropractic/physical therapy work in tandem with pain management to treat more aggressive conditions, as the physicians can target the problem areas and actively create a treatment plan to get you back to normal. Acting immediately will increase your chances of a full recovery.

For more information, please contact us.