Soft tissues such as skin, ligaments, muscles, and tendons can suffer from severe trauma during an accident. When you sustain soft tissue injuries, you can experience symptoms such as serious pain, bruising, and swelling. If your soft tissue injury resulted from the negligence of another person, you may be entitled to compensation. A Personal injury lawyer in orange county can walk you through your legal options and rights in detail.
Kinds of Soft Tisue Injuries
Soft tissue injuries can be acute traumatic injuries or overuse injuries. An acute traumatic soft tissue injury occurs suddenly because of an accident like a car crash or a slip and fall accident. Meanwhile, an overuse soft tissue injury can develop over time. The following are different kinds of soft tissue injuries:
- Open soft tissue injuries. Acute traumatic injuries can include open wounds such as lacerations, abrasions, and avulsions. Usually, they lead to blood loss and cause permanent scarring. An open soft tissue injury can be quite painful and requires long-term recovery times.
- Sprains. Sprains happen when ligaments are partially torn, often in the ankles, wrists, and knees. Also, acute trauma can cause this kind of injury.
- Contusions. This soft tissue injury develops because of acute trauma. Often, blunt force leads to contusion, causing pain, discoloration, bleeding, and swelling.
- Strains. Usually, this injury happens because of overuse, stretching, or force. It can involve the tendons or muscles and can seriously limit your mobility.
- Whiplash. This is common during a motor vehicle accident. It can happen when your neck violently moves back and forth.
- Tendonitis. This is an example of an overuse injury that happens when your tendons become inflamed. This usually impacts your hands, elbows, knees, hips, and shoulders.
Symptoms of Soft Tissue Injuries
Soft tissue injuries may not be obvious initially even when acute trauma is involved. You may start experiencing symptoms slowly, but this can become worse over time. These symptoms include pain, bleeding, swelling, visible bruising, muscle weakness, joint instability, a limited range of motion, and muscle cramping.
What are Your Legal Options?
A lot of accidents can result in soft tissue injuries. For instance, whiplash can happen when you are involved in a car accident. Also, you can slip and fall because of a dangerous condition on someone else’s property and suffer a tailbone contusion. Such injuries can be extremely painful and require extensive medical care. Also, they can take a long time to heal. Because of this, you want the responsible party to pay for your injury-related expenses. You can file a personal injury claim or lawsuit.
