Have you been in an Car Accident? If you haven’t been unlucky enough to be in an accident, chances are you will be. For every 1000 miles you drive, you have a one in 366 chance of getting in an accident. The more miles you drive, the more likely you are to become an accident victim.
Over 2.5 million people have to go to the hospital each year for car accident injuries, and over 200,000 are hospitalized due to their injuries. If you are in a car accident, what should you do? Here are some tips to find the best medical professionals to see after you have been in an accident.
Why Should I See A Doctor?
When you get into a car accident, you may be thinking about the damage to your car, rather than the damage to your body. However, you don’t need to ignore your body, even if you feel fine initially.
According to a Long Beach accident attorney from The Barnes Firm, People should always get checked out by medical professionals following any type of motor vehicle accident. Injuries are not always obvious right away, so getting checked out gives victims the best chances of finding an injury before it gets worse.
If you have been in an accident before, you know that pain from apparent injuries doesn’t manifest itself right away. Instead, you feel worse in the days after the injury than the day of the accident. You’ll need a doctor to determine how injured you really are.
What Type of Doctors Should I See?
You need to take a moment and consider which kind of doctors you need to see in the days after the car accident. Here are some suggestions for doctors who would be helpful to see after you have been involved in a car accident.
Chiropractors
Many people visit a chiropractor after an accident, and it is easy to see why. Chiropractors specialize in the manipulation of bones and muscles for a holistic, whole-body treatment. Because many people want to avoid pain medication, chiropractic care is a great alternative to the side effects of pain medication.
Chiropractors are great at treating your body while your body is healing as well as after your body begins to heal. In other words, chiropractors can treat the source of acute pain as well as chronic pain.
Orthopedic Doctors
If you have a bone or joint pain after an accident, as well as severe muscle pain, you may want to visit an orthopedic doctor. Orthopedic doctors and orthopedic surgeons treat a lot of car accident victims each year.
In general, if you have a broken bone or damage to joints, ligaments, and muscles, you will want to see an orthopedist. You may need surgery, or you may be able to feel better with physical therapy. An orthopedic doctor will be able to determine what you need to heal.
Plastic Surgeons
Often, accident victims need plastic surgery. That’s because victims of a car accident have cuts or burns from a car accident that need specialized treatment. If you are driving when someone hits you, you may receive cuts from flying glass or burns from airbag deployment.
When you have facial injuries or injuries to other parts of your body, a plastic surgeon will be able to help your body heal and look as good as it did before the accident.
Oral or Maxillofacial Surgeon
Just as you have injuries on your face or neck from a car accident, you may also have internal injuries to your face from the accident as well. Often, people lose their teeth or have damage to their teeth or jawbone because of an accident.
Car accidents can also cause damage to your jaw joint that makes it difficult to recover from. You may have heard of the temporomandibular joint and disorders of the joints, often called TMJ or TMJD. Issues with your jaw can make it difficult to eat or talk.
Oral and maxillofacial surgeons can put implants into your jaw to restore the teeth you lost. They can also repair your jaw that may have been broken or injured in an accident. When they finish, your teeth and jaw will look as good as they did before you were injured in the accident.
When you are in a car accident, you need to make sure that your injuries are treated. If you need emergency attention, due to broken bones or loss of blood, you need to go to the hospital.
If you are able to leave the scene of the accident, you need to go and see a doctor as soon as possible to get checked out. The sooner you get treatment, the sooner you can heal and resume your life and your activities.