Orange County Soft Tissue Injury Lawyers
A Soft Tissue Injury Is Not a Minor Injury
Soft tissue injuries involve damage to the muscles, tendons, or ligaments anywhere in the body. These painful injuries can cause swelling, bruising and significantly limit mobility. Many soft tissue injuries take up to six weeks to heal. However, in some cases, they can cause chronic pain and long-lasting complications.
If you have suffered a soft tissue injury due to someone else’s negligence, you are likely facing extensive medical bills as well as lost wages. Injuries to muscles and tendons often require physical therapy to heal, and can make it impossible to perform at your normal duties at your job while recovering. Few people can afford to miss work, and even fewer can afford extensive medical debt. That’s why you need an experienced personal injury attorney at your side. We at Allen Flatt Ballidis & Leslie have the experience and knowledge to help our clients be awarded the damages they both need and deserve. Contact us today and discover just how we can help you.
What Are the Different Types of Soft Tissue Injuries?
Soft tissue injury refers to a broad spectrum of potential damage. Muscles, ligaments, and tendons are all considered soft tissues, and can be found throughout the body. Though an injury to these areas may not look as serious as a broken bone or large laceration, they can lead to permanent disability, and lifelong pain. Because the spectrum of injury is so large, there are many different classifications, including:
Sprains: Sprains involve the stretching and tearing of ligaments. One of the more common areas to sprain is the ankle, which can take some time to heal, as it bears most of the body’s weight.
Strains: Strains may seem similar to sprains, but the key difference is they don’t involve the ligaments. Rather, a sprain is when a muscle or tendon is overstretched, torn, or twisted.
Contusions: Contusions, or more commonly known as bruises, are when there is internal damage, causing a pooling of blood under the skin. They can be as minor as knocking your knee into a table, or as serious as suffering a contusion on an organ after a car accident.
Tendonitis: Tendonitis refers to when a tendon becomes inflamed and painful. This kind of injury is often caused by repetitive motions, such as typing or handwriting.
Bursitis: Bursitis is the inflammation of the bursa, a fluid-filled sac that serves as a cushion between bones and muscles or tendons. It is often caused by the overuse of a limb.
Stress Fractures: Stress fractures are small cracks in the bone. They are typically found in the lower extremities. These fractures are not as serious as full breaks, and overuse or increased physical activity is usually the cause.
Serious Burns: Any type of burn is dangerous, but serious burns, or when the damage goes deep enough to injure tendons, ligaments, and muscles, can lead to permanent scaring and disfigurement.
What Is Whiplash?
Whiplash is a soft tissue injury of the neck, common in motor vehicle accidents, particularly rear-end collisions. It gets its name from the forceful whip-like motion of the head and neck when a vehicle is hit from behind. It can also result from falls, sports injuries, and other types of accidents. Many people with whiplash can improve in a matter of weeks with exercise and pain medications. However, some people experience chronic neck pain and other long-lasting complications.
Symptoms of whiplash may also be delayed. It can take over 24 hours after the initial accident for you to start feeling the symptoms. This means even if you are given a medical examination immediately after an accident, the medical professionals diagnosing you may not be able to catch a whiplash injury. That’s why if you begin to notice pain in your neck, lower back, or shoulders, or you begin to experience dizziness, an inability to sleep, and headaches, even if it has been a few days since your accident, you should contact a medical professional. It is very possible you are suffering from whiplash.
What Types of Accidents Cause Soft Tissue Injuries?
Due to the fact that soft tissues make up a large percentage of the body, they can be damaged by any number of accidents and scenarios. A simple trip at the workplace can easily lead to a sprain or stress fracture. This means that soft tissue injuries are among the most common injuries a person can sustain. It is incredibly important to be mindful of what can cause an injury, and how serious, even if it doesn’t look to be serious on the surface, the injury can be. You should be wary of:
- Car accidents
- Motorcycle accidents
- Truck accidents
- Bicycle accidents
- Pedestrian accidents
- Bus accidents
- Slip or trip and fall accidents
- Workplace accidents and overuse injuries
Don’t assume because you haven’t broken a bone or lost a limb that you aren’t injured. Soft tissue injuries may not become apparent until a day or two after the car accident, but can still leave you with constant pain and seriously diminish your quality of life.
What Are the Potential Consequences of Soft Tissue Injuries?
Injury to the muscles, ligaments, and tendons can be painful and debilitating. It takes time after soft tissues injuries to regain full mobility and function of the body. Victims of this type of injury may be unable to work or perform normal daily tasks while they are healing. Severe soft tissue injuries may require ongoing medical treatment, along with physical therapy, and lead to complications, such as fibromyalgia or chronic pain. Damages in soft tissue injury cases often include extensive medical bills, lost wages, and physical and emotional pain and suffering.
Why You Need an Attorney
Soft tissue injuries should not be taken lightly, especially if they were sustained in an accident that was someone else’s fault. They can have a long-lasting impact on your livelihood and well-being. Nevertheless, insurance companies place soft tissue injuries under extreme scrutiny, because they may be difficult to detect through x-rays and physical examinations. For your best chance of recovering full and fair compensation for soft tissue injuries, you need an experienced lawyer by your side. A good lawyer will work to gather evidence and demonstrate the impact your injury has had on your life. Insurance companies will likely not play fair. You need someone by your side to fight for your case.
Why Choose Us?
Our Orange County personal injury attorneys at Allen Flatt Ballidis & Leslie can thoroughly investigate your accident to determine fault and liability, and secure and preserve evidence to support your claim. We can negotiate skillfully with insurance companies on your behalf and shield you from their tactics to minimize their payouts. If necessary, we can fight for the compensation you deserve in court.
Our attorneys have more than 40 years of experience. We have won hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements and verdicts for our clients. We keep you informed on the status of your case in real time, and offer communication specific to your needs, not ours. If you have sustained soft tissue injuries through someone else’s negligence, contact us at (949) 752-7474 to schedule a free consultation with no time limits or restrictions. We can tell you if you have a case, and what damages you may be entitled to claim.
Additional Information
- Sprains, Strains and Other Soft-Tissue Injuries | OrthoInfo
- Overview of Sprains and Other Soft-Tissue Injuries | Merck Manual
- Sprains and Strains | MedlinePlus
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