Call Any Time
(203) 690-1030
(203) 690-1030
(203) 690-1030
Car accidents may cause serious injuries, including contusions and lacerations to many parts of your body. While many of these are addressed quickly after a medical evaluation and diagnosis, some injuries can create additional unexpected medical complications.
With severe medical diagnosis comes lengthy treatment paths that may take weeks, if not months, until you are completely healed. The added time one takes off work and taking time from one’s usual responsibilities creates astronomical medical bills, debt, and loss of income and work.
These expenses and losses should not come from your pocket. Reach out to Bert McDowell Injury Law today to learn more about what options are available to you in filing a personal injury claim.
Call us at (203) 633-7449 or contact us online to schedule a free case review.
Facing lacerations and contusions after a car accident can be just as hard as an injury traditionally thought of as more severe, such as broken bones.
Lacerations can become scarring, leaving visible deformities on your skin that may last a lifetime. Contusions may last several weeks, sometimes indicating internal bleeding and severe damage to tissue that lies under the derma.
Being injured during a car accident is bad enough, but realizing that you need stitches, possible surgery, or have more complicated injuries because of lacerations and contusions is frustrating and equally terrifying. As the victims of a negligent driver’s actions, you should focus on feeling better and healing rather than simultaneously handling a legal claim.
However, this is sometimes only possible when you work with an experienced personal injury attorney to handle your case.
A car accident contusions and lacerations attorney knows the ins and outs of Connecticut law: how to review and apply evidence to your case, calculate medical bills and lost wages, and build a strong case that ensures you will receive the compensation your case deserves.
Victims may encounter difficulties when attempting to negotiate with other parties. Insurers may be reluctant to pay what they owe or attempt to deflect blame onto the victim.
With the help of a lawyer, these complexities can be navigated effectively and strategically, helping the victim receive the compensation their case is owed.
In addition, your lawyer will be ready to fight for you when you are vulnerable to injury, standing ground before insurance companies are known to use pressuring tactics to make you settle for less. In the most complicated of claims, your attorney will stand before a judge on your behalf if your case goes to trial.
One may not think much about cuts and bruises, but in a car accident, they may lead to more serious medical issues along the line.
Cuts are prone to infection, scarring, and disfigurement. While most victims recover well and quickly from lacerations and contusions, not all experience a smooth recovery.
Bruises might indicate a more complex injury that may require surgery to correct or pose a life-threatening injury.
No matter the injury one endures in a car accident, victims must seek medical attention right away to receive a diagnosis for their injuries. Even if the injury appears minor to the eye, with the help of scans like CT scans, MRIs, and X-rays, medical staff can determine if there is a more complicated matter at hand.
A laceration is a deep cut that goes all the way through the skin and is often irregular or jagged in shape. In a car accident, a laceration may come from a puncture wound from a flying piece of debris or when the victim’s body hit a part of their car.
Doctors typically treat lacerations with stitches to close the wound and bandage as appropriately. Most victims heal well, with some minor yet visible scarring where they endured an injury.
However, some lacerations are dangerous because they are easy for bacteria to enter the body, creating the perfect environment for infection. As a result, victims will spend more time in the hospital, undergo surgery, acquire larger medical bills, and take more time to heal from their injuries than was expected.
Some lacerations can also be deep enough to affect the body’s ability to regrow tissue, requiring surgical grafts. Deep cuts can sever tendons, nerves, and even ligaments, making them just as debilitating as a fracture in some cases.
The physical pain and medical concern caused by a laceration, therefore, should never be overlooked.
The American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons states that contusions, also called bruising, are caused when a blunt object strikes the body.
In a car accident, contusions are caused by flying debris, the seatbelt, and the impact of someone hitting the inside of their car.
Symptoms of contusions seem ordinary, but bruises can become medically complex depending on where they happen.
Sometimes, when a pool of blood collects in damaged tissue, it creates a hematoma – a lump under the skin. Bruising also accompanies other severe medical conditions like broken bones, sprains, damaged muscles, organ damage, and other injuries.
Doctors typically evaluate and perform a diagnostic for contusions. If contusions are located in the abdomen or show evidence of a more complicated medical injury, they may perform scans like X-rays, CT scans, or MRIs before diagnosing.
Like many injuries, lacerations and contusions come with their own unique potential complications. Although complications do not happen in every medical case, when they do, they can cause additional surgeries, bandaging, scarring, and possible hospitalizations.
Some examples of medical complications with lacerations are:
Some examples of medical complications with contusions are:
Increased pressure in the injured area may cause restricted blood circulation and a condition called acute compartment syndrome. If left untreated, it may cause necrosis or the death of body tissue.
Once the condition causes necrosis, it is not reversible and will become gangrene, leading to an amputation of the limb. The consequences of this type of medical complication will severely impact one’s quality of life, daily routines, and independence.
If a laceration or contusion requires some sort of anesthetic to repair, there is always the risk that the patient may have adverse effects on the anesthesia used in the procedure.
Although medical staff works diligently to prevent an allergic reaction by learning about medical and family history, there is always the chance that the victim will have some kind of allergic reaction. Patients may experience:
In a hematoma, blood collects outside the larger blood vessels into the surrounding tissue, causing discoloration, inflammation, redness, and warm skin. Victims face a lot of pain in the areas where they have hematomas and sometimes require treatment for the blood to be reabsorbed into the surrounding tissues.
What is concerning about hematomas is that they may look like a bruise (contusion), and doctors must be able to tell them apart and make the proper diagnosis.
With the right circumstances, large hematomas can cause blood pressure to drop. Victims go into shock if their organs are not receiving enough blood or oxygen to function correctly — a life-threatening condition.
After an injury, calcium can collect in the bruise, causing a bone-like structure to grow instead of repairing the damaged tissue. Victims will feel hardness beneath the skin and a significant amount of pain in the area.
This medical complication is typically seen in larger muscles like the quadriceps and upper arms.
Victims will need to seek additional physical therapy to ensure the retention of mobility in the affected area. They must add routine icing, stretching, and compression to the area. The worst cases require surgery to correct.
Wounds happen in all shapes and sizes but should heal appropriately. However, this doesn’t happen sometimes, leading to more medical visits, treatment, and healing time needed.
Wound healing is a normal and natural human biological process that is divided into four sections: hemostasis, inflammation, proliferation, and tissue remodeling. Initial injuries begin to clot through a natural process in the human body before beginning to reconstruct the damaged tissue.
Here are some bodily pre-existing factors that may create poor wound closure in car accident patients:
Although these factors are not all a result of the accident, they may cause delayed healing for victims.
Connecticut, like many states across the US, passed rulings to create what is known as a statute of limitations. These rules are meant to encourage victims to come forward with their claims and push so that they fight for the compensation they are owed.
In personal injury cases, the limit is two years. Your car accident contusions and laceration lawyer will be ready to meet any deadlines, including the statute of limitations when they work on settling with the other party’s insurance company.
Lacerations and contusions will cause you to make a few trips to the hospital, but you should not have to bear the expense on your own when it was the cause of a negligent party. Victims should call a car accident contusion and laceration lawyer right away.
At Bert McDowell Injury Law, our team of experienced personal injury lawyers is here for you. With many years of experience, our team knows what to look for when reviewing evidence, how to put together a solid personal injury claim, and what to do when approached by the pressuring tactics presented by insurance companies.
Don’t wait any longer. Call us today to discuss your case.
Schedule a free case review with an experienced Hartford attorney when you reach us at (203) 633-7449 or contact us online.