Helping Victims of Serious Neck and Back Injuries
Many types of accidents, even if they seem mild, can cause serious back and neck injuries. Those accidents can include truck accidents, motorcycle accidents, pedestrian accidents, construction site accidents, slips, trips, falls, and more. Car crashes can cause whiplash, fractures, herniated discs, and life-changing spinal cord injuries.
If you have injured your neck or back in an accident caused by someone’s negligence or recklessness, you are entitled to seek financial compensation against the at-fault party. The severity of your back and neck injuries and the time it takes to recover – if you fully recover – will influence the compensation you can receive. Back and neck injuries are often chronic, meaning they cause long-term pain and suffering.
Because these injuries are often catastrophic and involve large settlements, it’s important that you consult with a knowledgeable New York personal injury attorney who has extensive experience in helping clients who suffered back and neck injuries. At Hach & Rose, LLP, we understand how back and neck injuries can negatively impact your life, family, and future. When you work with our skilled and compassionate attorneys, you will receive legal representation tailored to address the unique issues you face due to your back and neck injuries.
If you have suffered a back or neck injury in an accident in New York, it is imperative that you hire a lawyer you can trust to handle your claim. The New York neck and back injury attorneys at Hach & Rose, LLP, have earned the trust of thousands of clients over the last 20 years by consistently helping injury victims get results.
If you have been seriously injured due to the negligence or recklessness of another party, our dedicated attorneys are ready to help. Call (212) 779-0057 to schedule a free, no-obligation consultation.
Why Is It Important to Have the Right Lawyer for a Back and Neck Personal Injury Case?
An experienced back and neck injury attorney will thoroughly review the facts and circumstances of your accident, listen to your concerns, answer all your questions, and discuss your legal options. After reviewing the details of your back or neck injury, the New York personal injury attorneys at Hach & Rose, LLP can better understand the value of your injury claim.
The aim of insurance companies is to pay you as little as possible to compensate you for your back or neck injury. They will try to lowball your settlement by pressuring you into taking an amount that may seem impressive but far lower than you deserve. Many pitfalls can be avoided by working with an experienced New York personal injury attorney.
Trying to handle your back or neck injury settlement on your own without taking the time to understand the full consequences of the injury and getting the required medical treatment could cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars. Nobody who has been seriously injured in an accident should try to take on an insurance company by themselves, nor should they accept an insurer’s offer without fully understanding their legal options. The attorneys at Hach & Rose, LLP will take the necessary time and care to prove the full extent of your back or neck injury.
Most accident victims do not have the knowledge and experience to navigate their injury claims. When you are reviewing your medical records, you will see medical terminology and abbreviations that are difficult to understand. The insurance companies may disagree about your need for more medical treatment and whether the accident caused your back or neck injuries. Furthermore, it’s easy to miss important deadlines when recovering and managing countless doctors’ appointments.
When you work with the personal injury attorneys at Hach & Rose, LLP, you won’t have to worry about medical terminology and legal technicalities. Our skilled and compassionate legal team has the experience and knowledge to manage these issues, allowing you to focus on your physical and mental health.
The New York personal injury lawyers at Hach & Rose, LLP can help:
- Identify all liable parties and the insurance policies to provide compensation;
- Calculate your losses and estimate future losses related to the injury, including medical expenses, lost wages, loss of future earnings, and other losses;
- Negotiate a full and fair settlement with the insurers and;
- If a fair settlement is not reached, file a lawsuit and seek justice in the New York court system.
- Try your case in front of a jury if your case cannot be settled out of court.
Common Types of Back and Neck Injuries
Three of the most common types of back and neck injuries are:
- Herniated, Ruptured, or Slipped Disc: The round, flat discs between the vertebrae in the spine, which are designed to absorb pressure and maintain the spine’s flexibility, can herniate, rupture or slip out of place when the body experiences force or trauma.
- Whiplash or Connective Tissue Injury: Whiplash happens when joints between the vertebrae or the discs, ligaments, muscles, and nerve roots in the neck become hyperextended and damaged.
- Compression Fractures: Compression fractures occur when the vertebrae in the spine become broken due to trauma.
What Are the Symptoms of Back and Neck Injuries?
After a back or neck injury, you may suffer from any of the following symptoms:
- Sharp shooting pains down your legs or arms
- Muscle spasms
- Stiffness or achiness along your spine
- A persistent ache in the lower or middle part of your back
- Dull aches in your neck
- Strain and pain when moving body parts
- Incapacitating back pain upon lifting
- Tingling or numbness in legs, feet, hands, and/or fingers
- Headaches
- Shoulder pain
Hach & Rose, LLP Working for You
Serious neck and back injuries can cost personal injury victims hundreds of thousands of dollars. The medical bills for treatment, prescription drugs, physical therapy, rehabilitation, and more can pile up quickly. At Hach & Rose, LLP, our highly skilled New York personal injury attorneys will use their knowledge and experience on your back or neck injury case. We will fight tirelessly to ensure you receive the maximum compensation you deserve.
Accidents involving back or neck injuries are usually among the most complex personal injury cases. The last thing you want to do is try to handle your case alone. Allow an attorney well-versed in back and neck injuries to care for every aspect of your case so you can focus on your recovery.
Back and neck
Aggravation of a Preexisting Injury or Condition
A common occurrence in personal injury cases is when someone suffers an injury to their back or neck, which already has issues. Whether you’re involved in a car accident, construction accident, pedestrian accident, slip and fall accident, or any other personal injury accident, a previously injured back or neck will be more susceptible to reinjury or aggravation. Sometimes the most challenging part of a case is determining what is a previous injury and what is a new injury or aggravation.
According to the New York Pattern Jury Instructions, to the extent that an injury is aggravated, defendants are responsible to the extent that your preexisting condition is made worse. In other words, if someone is liable, they do not get a discount because they had a preexisting injury.
At Hach & Rose, LLP, some of our best results have been for people who aggravated preexisting conditions due to a defendant’s negligence.
Just because you injured your neck or back previously does not mean the aggravated injury you sustained in the accident is your fault. In fact, when people were previously injured, their cases are typically worth more because the prior injury or condition makes them more susceptible to a more significant injury the second time around.
If you have a preexisting condition that was aggravated after your accident, the insurance company might make you a lowball offer and try to convince you that you are fortunate to get that much. The insurance adjuster may tell you you cannot recover more compensation for your injuries because they were related to a preexisting condition.
When Hach & Rose, LLP handles your back or neck injury case, we won’t let the insurer get away with being unreasonable concerning your preexisting condition. Our New York personal injury lawyers won’t hesitate to file a lawsuit seeking the full compensation you deserve.
Understanding Your Medical Treatments and Options
Your healthcare providers can advise you on back and neck injury treatments. You may benefit from specific medications, epidural steroid injections, surgery or multiple surgeries, and less invasive options, such as spinal manipulations under anesthesia. No matter your treatment, you should be able to benefit from all the treatments your physicians recommend for you today and the treatments they will likely recommend for you in the future, such as rehabilitation and physical therapy.
That’s why it’s crucial that you hire an attorney who’s not only well-versed in the laws related to your back and neck injury but also thoroughly understands your back and neck pain and related medical needs. A skilled back and neck lawyer will grasp the importance of the treatment you need and work skillfully to ensure that your present and future medical expenses are accounted for.
Epidural Steroid Injections
Epidural steroid injections are commonly used, minimally invasive procedures to help people deal with pain in many body locations, including the back and neck. The injections provide temporary relief for pain but do not fix the cause of the pain.
A cervical epidural steroid injection treats pain in the neck and the upper region of the back. Numerous conditions may cause neck and upper back pain, such as a herniated disc, pinched nerves, and strained muscles.
People with the following conditions are typically strong candidates for epidural steroid injections:
- Spinal stenosis
- Herniated disc
- Degenerative disc
- Spondylolisthesis
- Sciatica
Types of Back Surgeries
In addition to reducing pain, back surgery can have a wide range of benefits. After back surgery, you may be able to move around better, your mood may improve, and you may no longer need to take as much medicine for pain. Back surgery may also allow you to return to work and be productive again.
Common types of back surgeries include:
- Vertebroplasty and kyphoplasty are similar procedures used to treat vertebral compression fractures. When a vertebral compression fracture is left untreated, you may experience debilitating pain and a hunched back. An injury can cause compression fractures. In the vertebroplasty procedure, a long needle inserts bone cement into the fracture. The cement is inserted into each affected vertebra. In more severe spinal compression cases, a kyphoplasty is performed, in which a balloon is inserted and inflated to lift the compressed vertebrae back to a normal height. After the vertebrae are lifted, bone cement is inserted into the heightened space. The bone cement strengthens the vertebrae, prevents further collapse, and reduces pain.
- Discectomy removes a herniated disk, which can occur in any part of the spine and irritates a nearby nerve.
- Facetectomy – A degenerating facet joint may become enlarged or develop bone spurs, leading to compression of a nearby nerve. A small portion of a facet joint may need to be removed to access a problematic disc. In either situation, a facetectomy is performed.
- Foraminotomy – This procedure reduces pain associated with a compressed spinal nerve. The surgeon cuts away bone at the sides of the vertebrae to widen the space where the nerves exit. The extra room can relieve pressure on the nerves and ease the pain. This procedure can also make the spine less stable, so the surgeon may perform a spinal fusion simultaneously, increasing your recovery time.
- Nucleoplasty – This minimally invasive laser surgery uses radiofrequency energy to treat patients with lower back pain caused by a herniated disk. The surgeon inserts a needle into the disk, then a plasma laser device is inserted into the needle, and the tip is heated. This creates a field that vaporizes the tissue in the disk, reducing its size and relieving nerve pressure.
- Spinal fusion involves removing the spinal disk between two or more vertebrae, then fusing the adjacent vertebrae with bone grafts or metal devices and screws. Spinal fusion may result in loss of flexibility in the spine and requires a long recovery to allow the bone grafts to grow and fuse the vertebrae together.
- Laminectomy – With this procedure, the surgeon removes parts of the bone, bone spurs, or ligaments in the back. While this relieves pressure on spinal nerves and can reduce pain, the procedure can make your spine less stable. If that occurs, you will likely need a spinal fusion as well. Doctors sometimes do the two procedures together.
- Artificial disk replacement – An alternative to spinal fusion for those with seriously damaged disks, this involves the removal of the disk and its replacement by a synthetic disk that helps restore height and movement between the vertebrae.
- Interlaminar implant – In this surgery, the surgeon places a U-shaped device between two vertebrae in the lower back, which helps keep the space between them open and eases pressure on the spinal nerves. Unlike spinal fusion, the implant provides stability. However, you may not be able to bend backward as easily.
Chiropractic Manipulations Under Anesthesia
Spinal manipulation under anesthesia, also known as MUA, is a non-invasive procedure performed by a chiropractor intended to offer pain relief for those who other forms of non-surgical care have helped. MUA involves sedating the patient and breaking up internal scar tissue that remains from an injury or surgery. The goal is to restore movement while also reducing pain. MUA can be used to treat back and neck injuries, as well as shoulders, joints, and muscle spasms.
The benefits of MUA include:
- Breaks up scar tissue surrounding spinal joints that injuries or prior surgeries have caused.
- Decreases or eliminates muscle spasms
- Stretches shortened muscles, tendons, and ligaments to aid healing
- Reduces pain from damaged intervertebral discs
- Safer than surgery
- Cost-effective
- Covered by most insurance plans
- Covered by most workers’ compensation
ICD-9-CM Codes for Back and Neck Injuries and Conditions
The International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) is the official system of assigning codes to diagnoses and procedures in hospitals in the United States.
- Disc herniation – 722.0
- Disc degeneration – 722.4
- Cervicalgia (Neck Pain) – 723.1
- Closed fracture of the vertebra without mention of spinal cord injury – 805.20-805.80
- Closed fracture of vertebra with spinal cord injury – 806.20-806.90
- Dislocation of cervical vertebra, unspecified, closed – 839.00 Dislocation of first cervical vertebra, closed – 839.01
- Dislocation of second cervical vertebra closed – 839.02 Dislocation of third cervical vertebra, closed – 839.03
- Dislocation of fourth cervical vertebra closed – 839.04
- Dislocation of fifth cervical vertebra closed – 839.05
- Dislocation of sixth cervical vertebra closed – 839.06 Dislocation of seventh cervical vertebra, closed – 839.07
- Dislocation of multiple cervical vertebrae closed – 839.08
- Sprains and strains of the neck – 847.0
- Open wound of the neck – 874.0
- Injury of face and neck – 959.09