IF YOU SUSTAINED SERIOUS ACCIDENT INJURY, A RECENT STUDY PREDICTS YOU WILL STILL HAVE PAIN IN THE YEARS TO COME
Pain is the natural side effect from any type of personal injury recovery, including car accidents and major trauma injuries. Unfortunately for the majority of those accident victims, the pain never goes away. We have cataloged the typical injuries from accidents for your use. This is something that accident survivors have always known but now a major pain study by the University of Washington has come to the same conclusion. In fact almost 63% of all trauma patients still experience moderate to severe pain one year later.
This study included 3047 patients ages 18-84. They all had experienced acute trauma from an accident. The researchers followed the people for over one year and discovered most of the pain was reported in the joints and extremities (44%), back (26%) head (11%) and neck (7%). Moreover, 59% of those patients with injury-related pain had three or more painful areas one year after injury.
Pain can rob you of your family time, work productivity and quality of life. Since pain is a component of your claim for damages in a personal injury lawsuit, it is important to choose the best qualified attorney in your area. In Orange County, California, you have the advantage of one of the top-rated personal injury firms in the state, Allen, Flatt, Ballidis and Leslie.
Other findings worth noting in this March 2008 study were that more interventions are needed to decrease chronic pain when treating trauma patients. Pain levels at the 3 month marker were indicators on how long pain severity would continue. Basically, if you had severe pain after three months of a single trauma, most probably you would be experiencing at least moderate pain in one year’s time.
In addition, other recent studies have shown patients with specific injuries like pelvic fractures and lower extremity injuries will most likely experience chronic pain five to seven years after the injury. Of course, this can eventually lead to various forms of disability, post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.
The information for early pain management options should be available to patients so that they can choose the best treatment according to their injury and lifestyle. But where can a person go to get unbiased information? First, always keep a good line of communication open with your doctor and then start with the following resources:
A general overview of evaluating Health Information on the Internet can be found at, http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/evalhealthinfo.html.
A comprehensive non-profit organization called the American Pain Foundation has several resource guides for managing and understanding your pain. Here are a few helpful links:
Pain Resource Guide,
Discussion Guide for you and your doctor,
Pain Treatment Options,
Options for Managing pain,
Pain relief: OTC options.
Take care, drive defensively and stay safe.

