Dr. Allan Horowitz, published newspaper article, Richmond Hill Liberal, Copyright October 18, 1989
Dear Dr. Horowitz:
Over the past twenty years or so I have had three whiplash injuries.
All three times, I was sitting in my car, minding my own business, when my car was smacked from behind by another car. Once the guy behind just slid into my car because of the ice on the road, but the other two times they just weren’t paying attention to the road.
I still have neck pain form time to time and when it turns a bit cold and/or damp, my neck lets me know it.
I never really paid any attention to my neck before the accidents, but I am wondering now what really happened in my neck. What exactly is a whiplash injury?
Answer:
The term “whiplash” really doesn’t tell us that much, but it is the term usually given to a neck injury which results from a sudden “jolting” of the neck. This usually results from a car accident, but can also happen during sporting activities (being hit from the rear during a hockey game) or even slipping on some ice can lead to a whiplash injury.
There are three things which must be described when talking about a “whiplash” injury. The force which causes the injuries, what happens to the neck and head immediately after impact, and the resulting injuries.
The force is usually an acceleration-deceleration force. If you are stopped in your car and then hit from the rear, this is called a deceleration force. If you are moving in your vehicle and strike another object (car, wall, ditch, lamp post, fire hydrant) and your car abruptly comes to a halt, this is known as an acceleration force because your head and neck are actually thrown forward.
The neck usually is thrown forward or backward, or both, immediately as a result of the force. If you are hit from the rear your body is thrown forward in relation to the head. This causes the neck to snap backwards. It then sometimes recoils and snaps forward.
If your car hits another object from the front, your body is abruptly stopped while your head still is moving forward. This causes the head to snap forward and then sometimes a recoil backwards takes place.
The injuries depend on the type of force, position of the neck, how much time you had to prepare for the impact (i.e. no warning, or maybe you heard squealing tires and had one or two seconds to brace yourself) and how good was the health of your neck to begin with (arthritis, previous neck injuries, congenital problems, strength of neck muscles).
If your car is struck from the rear and your head snaps backward, the muscles and ligaments at the front of the neck will be strained, torn, ripped, stretched, beat-up, traumatized, and wrecked. If the force is the opposite, then the tissues at the rear of the neck will not be too happy.
There is some component of each in most whiplash cases. Although there might not be any damage to the front muscles, there is almost always damage to the muscles at the rear of the neck, and down into the upper back and shoulder area. A very slight rear-end impact, even if the car in the rear is moving as slow as seven miles per hour, can cause extreme damage to the person’s neck in the front car.
So now you know that the term whiplash doesn’t mean anything. A typical rear-end collision resulting in neck pain should be described this way: acute cervical sprain resulting from acute hyperextension because of a deceleration force.
In English this means that the soft tissue of the neck were traumatized because the neck was thrown suddenly backward because a force was applied which pushed the body forward in relation to the neck and head.
I’ll be doing a series of articles on whiplash in the next few weeks so if anyone has any specific questions about this topic, please write to me as soon as possible and I will try to answer each letter in the column.