Auto Accident & Personal Injury Care

Injuries from a motor vehicle collision have a pattern of their own. The most important thing to understand is that feeling fine at the scene means very little, because adrenaline masks pain effectively in the hours after a crash, and a great many patients first notice neck stiffness, headaches or lower back pain a day or two later, once that response has worn off.

Whiplash is the most common injury we see. In a rear-end collision the torso is driven forward by the seat while the head lags behind and then whips forward, and that rapid movement strains the muscles, ligaments and joint capsules of the neck beyond their normal range. The damage is largely to soft tissue, which is precisely why it frequently does not appear on standard imaging and can be wrongly dismissed as insignificant.

Low-speed collisions deserve particular mention. The damage to a vehicle correlates poorly with the damage to the people inside it, and a bumper that survived a parking-lot impact tells you nothing reliable about the forces that traveled through an occupant’s neck. We assess the person, not the car.

At our Dearborn practice, assessment covers how the collision happened, where you were seated, whether you saw it coming, and what symptoms have emerged since. Treatment usually begins gently, settling acute spasm and inflammation before progressing to adjustments, myofascial release, and therapeutic exercises as the tissue calms and tolerance improves.

Thorough documentation matters in these cases. We record findings carefully from the first visit onward, both because it guides your care and because personal injury claims turn on a clear, contemporaneous record of what was found and how it progressed. We are glad to communicate with your attorney or insurer as needed.

If you have been in a collision, whether recently or some months ago with symptoms that never fully resolved, contact our office to arrange an evaluation.