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Lumbar Spine Injuries Caused by Motor Vehicle Accidents

Some of the most common car accident injuries are lumbar back injuries. These can include soft tissue, disc, joint, and spinal injuries. The forces released in motor vehicle accidents can injure your back, even when the crashes occur at lower speeds. In a study reported by the journal Traffic Injury Prevention, one-half of all people involved in car accidents that occurred at less than 10 mph suffered lumbar pain. Low back pain is one of the most commonly reported injuries in the US.

Common Lumbar Back Injuries in Car Accidents


The lumbar region of your back is the lower portion of the vertebral column. Several types of lumbar spine injuries can occur in car accidents, as detailed below.

Soft Tissue Lumbar Spine Injuries


In some cases, you might experience pain in the lower back following a car accident that’s caused by damage to the ligaments, tendons, or muscles that surround the lumbar spine. These injuries can include sprains, bruises, strains, and tears. Since your lumbar spine bears your body weight and absorbs the impact forces in a car crash, it is especially vulnerable to injury.

Soft tissue injuries in the lower back are more difficult to identify because they don’t show up on X-rays, but doctors can use imaging techniques to properly diagnose them. Soft tissue injuries in the lower back can result in chronic pain and require physical therapy to properly heal.

Herniated or Bulging Lumbar Spine Discs


The vertebrae of your spine are separated by intervertebral discs that cushion the bones. Each disc is filled with a gel-like substance surrounded by a tough cartilage layer that surrounds the soft center.

In a car crash, the forces can cause the soft center of a disc to bulge and place pressure on the surrounding nerves to cause a bulging disc. In some cases, the outer cartilage layer might crack, causing the center portion to protrude and herniate through the disc. Both of these injuries can cause pain because of irritation to and pressure on the surrounding nerve roots. You might experience radiating pain, tingling, or numbness down your legs from a bulging or herniated lumbar spinal disc.

Lumbar Facet and Sacroiliac Joint Injuries


Your facet joints connect your lumbar vertebrae. You also have sacroiliac joints that connect your pelvis to your lower spine to support your weight while standing.

Injuries to your lumbar facet and sacroiliac joints can occur in car wrecks and cause significant pain. If you have a sacroiliac joint injury, you might experience pain in your buttocks, lower back, thigh, foot, and groin. You might also need to shift your body weight while standing or sitting.

Lumbar facet joint injuries are common in car accidents. These cause your facet joints to swell and can lead to facet joint syndrome. The symptoms can include lower back pain, thigh pain, or buttocks pain. You might have trouble standing up straight, experience stiffness, and have trouble getting out of a chair.

Lumbar Vertebral Fractures


Motor vehicle collisions are a leading cause of vertebral fractures. A lumbar vertebra fracture occurs when the vertebra is dislocated or broken. These can include a compression fracture caused by your lower body remaining restrained by your seatbelt while your upper body is thrown forward, a burst fracture when the vertebra is crushed and shatters because of severe compression, or a flexion fracture caused by excessive spine flexion.

Lumbar Spinal Cord Injuries


An injury to your spinal cord in the lumbar region is the most serious type of lumbar injury you might suffer in a car accident. This injury can cause paralysis from the injury site down and can leave you with permanent paraplegia of your lower back, groin region, and legs. The completeness of this injury affects the degree of sensation you might lose. A complete injury is a total loss of sensation and movement below the injury site, while an incomplete injury involves damage to the spinal cord without a complete loss of sensation and movement.

Diagnosis of Lumbar Spine Injuries


Following a car accident, you should seek immediate medical attention at the emergency department. When lumbar spine injuries are expected, the doctor will ask you questions about your accident and injuries, perform a physical exam, and test your sensory functioning. They evaluate you to rule out a spinal cord injury.

They might also perform diagnostic tests, including:

  • X-rays to diagnose damage to the vertebrae surrounding your spinal cord and check for changes to your spine
  • Computerized tomography (CT) scan to obtain a clearer image of your lumbar spine by taking a series of numerous X-rays to define disc, bone, and other changes
  • Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) test that uses radio waves and a strong magnetic field to produce images and find disc herniations, blood clots, and other masses that are compressing your spinal cord or the surrounding nerve roots



If your spinal cord is injured, your doctor might perform a comprehensive neurological exam after the swelling has subsided to identify the level and completeness of your spinal cord injury. They might test your ability to feel pinprick sensations and light touches, and your muscle strength.

Treatment for Lumbar Spine Injuries


The treatment for lumbar spine injuries depends on the type you have. Many soft tissue injuries can be treated with rest, applications of heat and cold, and over-the-counter pain relievers. You might also have to undergo physical therapy to help you recover.

Herniated or bulging discs often require corticosteroid injections to relieve swelling and pain, combined with physical therapy. You might be prescribed muscle relaxers and prescription pain relievers. If corticosteroids don’t work, your doctor might recommend surgery.

If you have a spinal cord injury, you might be permanently disabled. To improve the quality of your life and your independence, you may undergo rehabilitative care, occupational therapy, and physical therapy to help you with the transition.

What to Do After Suffering a Lumbar Spine Injury in a Car Crash


Always see a doctor following a car crash when you believe you’ve suffered an injury to your lower back. Seeking immediate medical care can help you diagnose the issue and obtain prompt treatment, which can speed your recovery process. Prompt care and treatment can also demonstrate a causal link between your accident and your injury. Insurance companies might otherwise try to blame your injury on a different incident to try to avoid paying your injury claim.

Even if you have pre-existing lower back injuries, a car accident can cause them to worsen. With proper care, you might be entitled to recover compensation for the worsening of your condition.

Once you’ve received a proper diagnosis and treatment, you should speak to an experienced car accident lawyer. An attorney can handle the communication with the insurance company for you and prevent you from making mistakes that could harm your claim. Experienced injury lawyers know the tactics that insurance companies use to avoid and reduce claims and can gather evidence and documentation to combat them for you.

When you hire a lawyer to help you with your claim, they will thoroughly investigate what occurred, gather evidence to support your case, and advocate for you. In most cases, hiring a lawyer can increase your chances of recovering compensation for your losses and obtaining more money than you could on your own.

It’s important to choose an attorney with experience handling lumbar spine injury claims and a strong track record of success. When you suffer injuries to your lumbar spine in a motor vehicle accident caused by someone else, you are entitled to file a claim to recover fair compensation for all of your economic and non-economic losses. A knowledgeable lawyer can help you through the process and keep you informed at all stages of your claim.

Lumbar spine injuries can range in severity. It’s important to get medical and legal help as soon as possible to prevent further injury and protect your rights.

Things You Should Know About Referred Pain

You might assume that pain is caused by the area of your body that is hurting. Some pain problems can originate further up the nerve pathway, or even within the spine. Referred pain is a term that can confuse you about the nature of your health problem.

Understanding the basics of referred and secondary pain can help you to manage your nagging cases. The following are four important points to start with.

1. Referred pain: Causes

Complex network of nerves makes up the human nervous system. The spinal cord, which is the largest nerve bundle, transmits signals between the brain, body, and mind through several major nerve root branches that run through the spinal cord. These nerve roots branch out through the spaces between vertebrae. These nerve roots branch out to many smaller nerves.

This system’s interconnectedness sometimes allows pain signals from the body to travel from one place to another. The spinal column may be the source of the initial pain. A herniated disc or spinal stenosis could cause pain in the spine.

Referred pain can also be caused by trigger points . Trigger points can form in any area of the body. Chronic trigger points often affect the upper back and shoulders. Trigger points can be caused by repetitive motion strain, emotional stress and muscle injuries.

Even if your spine is healthy or you have no trigger points, you may still feel referred musculoskeletal discomfort due to soft tissue inflammation. Strained tissue can entrap a nerve and send pain signals along the nerve pathway.

2. Referred pain is a common example

Sciatica and cervical radioculopathy are two common causes of referred spine pain. A herniated disc spinalstenosis, or another lumbar problem can cause sciatica. This pinches the roots the sciatic nerve. Sciatica can cause pain in the leg or foot, as well as numbness or tingling or loss of muscle strength.

Cervical Radiculopathy can produce symptoms similar to sciatica, but in the upper extremities. This happens when the cervical nerve roots are compressed and send abnormal pain signals to the arm, shoulder, or hand. You might mistake these hand symptoms for carpal tunnel syndrome.

Referred pain can be independent of nerve compression. They are simply a result the interconnections between physical components. A common example of this is an ice cream headache. However, shoulder pain could be a sign of heart or liver problems.

3. Referred pain can be treated with non-surgical treatment options

You can be checked by a primary care physician or an emergency physician for any symptoms that could indicate a heart attack, or other serious condition. Even if the problem area doesn’t seem to be physically severe, you should get checked out for any musculoskeletal issues which might cause referred pain.

Non-surgical treatments are often the best option for referring pain. For example, injections into trigger points may be beneficial if your pain management professional feels they are present. These injections are made up of drugs that relax muscle knots and make them submissive.

Injections may also be used to reduce inflammation or irritation near the spinal nerve roots. Transforaminal injections deliver steroid medication directly to the swollen tissue, which reduces swelling.

Conservative corrective care may also be helpful for referred pain caused by chronic musculoskeletal weaknesses or imbalances. Your doctor might recommend adjustments, physical therapy, or massage therapy to maintain a more straight, healthy, and less stressful posture.

4. Neurosurgery for Referred pain

If conservative methods fail to resolve your referred pain you might consider surgery. Your neurosurgeon will recommend one of many procedures depending on the source of your referred pain.

A discectomy is a procedure that removes the disc. The minimally invasive version, called microdiscectomy, can be used to treat referred pain. The neurosurgeon will remove a small amount of vertebral bones to reach the herniated disk, and then the surrounding nerve tissue will be removed.

Thickening or overgrown bone can press against spinal nerve tissue in cases of spinal stenosis and bone spurs. The problem can be addressed by your neurosurgeon who will remove the bone causing the nerve to become free. It is possible for nerve tissue to be damaged from compression to take some time to heal.

Florida Medical Pain Management will diagnose the root cause of your pain, and provide state-of-the art treatments to get it under control. Call our office to find out more or schedule a consultation.

This article was written by a medical professional at Florida Medical Pain Management. Florida Medical Pain Management is proud to offer comprehensive Pain Management In Clearwater to a diverse group of patients. Patients at Florida Medical Pain Management can get help managing hip, knee, leg, and neck pain. The practice also offers comprehensive arthritis management, along with treatments for auto accidents, sports, and work injuries.