Answer provided by Rex Bush, webmaster of this blog’s affiliated website: Utah-Personal-Injury-Attorney.com. Click here Utah Injury Attorney to visit our home page and access other relevant articles on Utah injury law.

Q.  Does anyone have a ballpark figure of a settlement out expected from a car accident not at fault other party has full coverage and have back problems (soft tissue damage)?

Thanks, Bryan

A.  Bryan, you need to provide a lot more information for an accurate estimate on the settlement value of a “soft tissue” injury case.

Soft tissue is a term that refers to structures of the body that connect, envelope, support and/or move the structures around it. It normally refers to muscle, tendons and ligaments but it can also include nerves, blood vessels, and fat as well as synovial tissue (which is the material which composes the joint capsules.

Soft tissue can also refer to “fascia” which is a fibrous connective tissue surrounding bones, muscles and joints. Fascia also joins the skin to the tissue below it.

Damage to “soft tissue” can be very minor injury which heals completely with no residual symptoms.

On the other hand, since the soft tissues hold the bones of the spine (vertebrae) in place, a traumatic injury can stretch these tissues so that they no longer correctly perform their support function. This can result in excessive vertebral movement known as “loss of motion segment integrity”.

This ligamentous laxity (looseness) and accompanying vertebral movement, can be demonstrated by a proper set of plain film (a basic x-ray), flexion (leaning forward) and extension (leaning backward) x-rays.

The excessive movement is known as “translation” (back-and-forth movement) or angular variation (rotational movement) Once it exceeds certain normal limits, as established by the AMA, it qualifies, under the AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment, for a whole person impairment rating of as much as 25-28%.

Loss of motion segment integrity caused by soft tissue injury can be so bad, in extreme cases, as to require surgery.

Soft tissue damage can also give rise to a painful and debilitating condition known as Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy(RSD) or Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS). Some significant settlements and verdicts have been obtained in recent years for injury victims with RSD/CRPS.

Some new treatments have been developed in recent years which provide relief to some soft tissue sufferers. These include a variety of injective type therapies such as “prolotherapy”. Prolotherapy restores stability to the soft tissues of the spine through injection of saline (that’s right, salt water) solution.

Finally, though not traditionally and properly classified as a “soft tissue” injury, some insurance adjusters go so far as to include injury to the intervertebral discs as soft tissue injuries. This would include injuries commonly known as “slipped disc” but more properly referred to as disc “herniation”, “bulge” or “protrusion”.

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Article provided by Rex Bush, webmaster of this blog’s affiliated website: Utah-Personal-Injury-Attorney.com. Click here Utah Injury Attorney to visit our home page and access other relevant articles on Utah injury law.

Whiplash is injury to neck bones, discs (a sort of “cushion” between the bones of the spine) and, most commonly, the supporting ligaments, tendons and muscles.  (the so-called “soft-tissues” of the neck)

Whiplash results from a sudden speeding up or slowing down, as in a car accident, when one is hit from behind or stops suddenly due to a front-end impact, and there is a violent backward and forward movement of the head.

Ligaments are like rubber bands that hold the bones in place.  Tendons connect muscle to bone.  Both can become weak or injured and may not heal back to their original condition.  This is because the blood supply to these parts is limited and healing is, therefore, slow and incomplete.   They also have many nerve endings causing pain where the ligaments are damaged or loose.

Hippocrates, an ancient Greek doctor known as “the Father of Medicine” cured this pain by plunging a red hot poker into the joint.

Few modern patients are willing to endure this cure and so, for a very long time, whiplash sufferers have had no real option–other than tasty and delightful painkiller drugs–to eliminate the pain.

According to the advocates of “prolotherapy” those days are gone.

Thanks to this simple and clever scientific breakthrough, whiplash sufferers now have hope for restoration of the soft tissues that support neck bones.

Prolotherapy is injection of sugar water into the soft-tissues of the neck.   The resulting inflammation increases blood supply and nutrient flow that stimulates the tissue to repair itself.

Prolotherapy is short for proliferative injection therapy.   Proliferative refers to the tendency of the soft tissues to “proliferate” i.e. increase,  with the treatment.

According to doctors who believe in this treatment, some patients many only need a few treatments while others many need 10 or more.  The average number of treatments is reported to be 4-6.

I’m a personal injury lawyer and have had only one client undergo these treatments.   He was very happy with the increased stability and decreased pain in his neck that he attributed to the treatment.

Doctors who favor this treatment believe it can be used to cure other ailments such as carpal tunnel syndrome, TMJ and fibromyalgia.  For a list of these see http://www.prolotherapy.com/prolohelp.htm.

Useful info on this subject is found at http://www.prolotherapy.com/

For more information here is an article from Practical PAIN MANAGEMENT, January/February 20  ppm2007

For views from those who question the efficacy of this treatment see http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/prolo.html

For Utah residents, prolotherapy is delivered at the Docere Clinics, 2188 S. Highland Drive, Suite 210, Salt Lake City, Utah,  84106  801.582.3260.

Be sure to consult your personal doctor about whether prolotherapy is right for you.

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