Back and spinal cord injuries are among the most devastating consequences of car accidents, truck wrecks, falls, and other traumatic incidents. According to the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center (NSCISC), approximately 18,000 new traumatic spinal cord injuries occur in the United States each year, and vehicle crashes are the leading cause, accounting for nearly 39 percent of all cases. Even back injuries that do not involve the spinal cord itself — such as herniated discs, compression fractures, and muscle tears — can cause debilitating pain, limit mobility, and require months or years of treatment.
If you have suffered a back or spinal cord injury in a Georgia accident caused by someone else’s negligence, understanding the medical and legal dimensions of your injury is essential for protecting your right to fair compensation.
Types of Back Injuries
The back is a complex structure of bones, discs, muscles, ligaments, and nerves, and any of these components can be damaged in an accident. The most common types of back injuries seen in personal injury cases include the following.
Herniated discs occur when the soft material inside a spinal disc pushes through its outer shell and presses on nearby nerves. This can cause sharp pain, numbness, tingling, and weakness in the back, legs, or arms depending on the location. Herniated discs are extremely common in rear-end collisions and can require steroid injections, physical therapy, or surgery to treat.
Compression fractures involve cracks or breaks in the vertebrae, often caused by the force of a high-speed collision or a fall from height. These fractures can cause the vertebrae to collapse, leading to chronic pain, loss of height, and spinal deformity. Older adults with osteoporosis are particularly vulnerable.
Muscle and ligament strains affect the soft tissues supporting the spine. While these injuries are sometimes dismissed as minor, severe strains can cause significant pain and limitation that lasts for weeks or months. They are closely related to soft tissue injuries that frequently accompany accidents.
Spinal stenosis is a narrowing of the spinal canal that can develop or worsen as a result of trauma. It puts pressure on the spinal cord and nerves, causing pain, numbness, and difficulty walking.
Spinal Cord Injuries
Spinal cord injuries are the most severe category of back injury and can result in partial or complete loss of motor function and sensation below the level of injury. These injuries are classified as either complete or incomplete.
A complete spinal cord injury results in total loss of sensation and motor function below the injury site. Depending on where the damage occurs, this can result in paraplegia (paralysis of the lower body) or tetraplegia (paralysis of all four limbs).
An incomplete spinal cord injury means some nerve pathways remain intact, allowing the patient to retain partial sensation or movement below the injury. Recovery potential is generally better with incomplete injuries, though outcomes vary widely.
The NSCISC reports that approximately 305,000 people are currently living with traumatic spinal cord injuries in the United States. The lifetime healthcare costs for a person with a severe spinal cord injury can exceed one million dollars, not including lost wages and reduced earning capacity.
Symptoms That Require Immediate Attention
After any accident, certain symptoms indicate a possible back or spinal cord injury and require emergency medical evaluation. These include severe back or neck pain, inability to move the arms or legs, numbness, tingling, or loss of sensation in the extremities, difficulty walking or maintaining balance, loss of bladder or bowel control, and difficulty breathing.
Not all back injuries present symptoms immediately. Herniated discs and soft tissue injuries in particular can take hours or days to produce noticeable pain. This is one reason why seeking medical attention promptly after any car accident or fall is critical; both for your health and for establishing a clear connection between the accident and your injuries.
How Back and Spinal Cord Injuries Affect Your Claim
Back and spinal cord injuries often result in substantial personal injury claims because of the significant medical costs, prolonged recovery periods, and long-term impact on the victim’s ability to work and live independently. When pursuing a claim for a back injury in Georgia, your damages may include emergency treatment, surgery, hospitalization, and rehabilitation costs, ongoing expenses for physical therapy, pain management, and medication, lost wages during recovery and potentially for the remainder of your career, reduced earning capacity if you cannot return to your prior occupation, pain and suffering reflecting chronic pain and diminished quality of life, and the cost of assistive devices, home modifications, or long-term care.
Spinal cord injury cases in particular require careful economic analysis. Life care planners and economists are often retained to project the full cost of future medical needs and lost earning potential over the victim’s remaining lifetime.
Challenges in Back Injury Cases
Insurance companies are particularly aggressive in disputing back injury claims. Common defense strategies include arguing that the injury is degenerative and not caused by the accident, pointing to pre-existing conditions such as prior disc problems or arthritis, claiming that the treatment received was excessive or unnecessary, and using surveillance to argue that the claimant is not as limited as they report.
Georgia law protects injured individuals from these tactics through the eggshell plaintiff doctrine, which holds that a defendant takes the plaintiff as they find them. If the accident aggravated a pre-existing back condition and made it worse, you are entitled to compensation for that aggravation. Thorough medical documentation and consistent treatment are your best defenses against attempts to minimize your claim.
Common Accidents That Cause Back and Spinal Cord Injuries
Back injuries can result from nearly any type of accident, but they are most common in car accidents and rear-end collisions, truck accidents involving large commercial vehicles, motorcycle crashes where the rider is thrown from the bike, slip and fall accidents on unsafe property, and workplace incidents including falls from ladders, scaffolding, or rooftops.
Get Legal Help for a Back or Spinal Cord Injury
If you or a family member has suffered a back or spinal cord injury in an accident in Athens, Conyers, Duluth, or anywhere in Georgia, the attorneys at Burrow & Associates are ready to help. We have more than 30 years of experience handling serious injury cases and understand the medical complexity and high stakes involved in spinal injury claims. We offer free consultations and handle every case on a contingency fee basis; you pay nothing unless we win. Contact us today to discuss your case.
