Whiplash

Whiplash symptoms are the most common car accident injuries.

What is whiplash? It is a soft tissue injury, cervical muscle strain or ligament sprain, muscle pain or cervical spine injury. Whiplash can also be termed a “syndrome” due to its frequent involvement with headaches, shoulder pain and interscapular (between the shoulder blades) pain.

Whiplash can occur from even in low speed collisions. The reason: the kinetic energy (force) of a car is very high, even at five miles per hour, due to the large mass of the car. This energy is transferred to passengers and actually more violent if cars are not damaged, which is often the case in low impact collisions.

As stated previously, whiplash can affect the cervical spine (vertebrae) causing injury to intervertebral discs which can cause radiating pain, tingling, numbness or pins and needles into the arm, hand or fingers, facet and joints causing local neck or shoulder pain, the muscles attaching to the neck and mid-back such as the trapezius, scalenes, sterno-cleidomastoid, levator scapulae, inter-scapular, rhomboid or paravertebral causing trigger points or referred symptoms into the arms.

Whiplash Symptoms: