​The Signs and Symptoms of Broken Ribs after an Auto Accident

After a serious car wreck, you may feel pain in parts of your body that you have never experienced. The aches and pains that follow a serious and traumatic event, such as a car crash, can affect you for the days, weeks, and months to follow. One common injury that is sometimes hard to detect right away is a bruised or broken rib.

If you fracture a rib in a crash and believe someone else was to blame, get medical treatment, then consult a car accident lawyer about your legal rights.

Broken Ribs From Car Crashes

When an auto accident happens, your body can get tossed violently. The seatbelt may snap back quickly to keep you from flying out of the car. This can cause your ribs to become bruised and sore. Your body may also hit the steering wheel or other hard parts of the car, breaking or seriously injuring your ribs.

Human beings have 12 pairs of ribs. The first seven pairs attached directly to the sternum by costal cartilages are known as the true ribs, while the 8th, 9th, and 10th pairs are known as false ribs and do not join the sternum.

The 11th and 12th pairs are the floating ribs and are only half the size of the other ribs that do not reach the front of the body. Every true rib has a small head with two articular surfaces, one articulating on the body of the vertebra and a more anterior tubercle articulating with the tip of the transverse process of the vertebra.

Every rib consists of a head, neck, and shaft, and all of your ribs attach to the thoracic vertebrae. The ribs have numbers to match the vertebrae they attach to.

The head of a rib is the end part closest to the vertebra. The neck of a rib is the flattened part extending laterally from the head. The shaft or body of the rib is thin, flat, and curved. This curve becomes most prominent when the rib turns and attaches to deep back muscles. Any part of the rib can fracture due to trauma.

With such a common injury, here are a few signs and symptoms to be on the lookout for after your car accident:

• Pain that ranges from mild to severe in the area of your ribs
• Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath
• Pain while breathing
• Pain from pressure to the chest region
• Anxiety and restlessness
• A headache that will not go away
• Dizziness or fatigue

A broken rib can be either a rib that is cracked or completely separated. The thoracic or rib cage forms the thorax or chest portion of your body and consists of 12 pairs of ribs with costal cartilages and the sternum anchored to the 12 thoracic vertebrae (T1 to T12) that protect the heart and lungs.

A bruised rib is a damaged one, although the bones remain intact. Bruised rib pain will result from damage to surrounding soft tissue, cartilage, and muscles, and although it is not as serious as a fracture, the injury can still cause significant pain.

A rib may crack or suffer a hairline fracture. Though these injuries can still hurt, cracked ribs are less dangerous than ribs that have fractures involving multiple pieces.

Truly broken ribs are a major concern because jagged ends of ribs can damage major blood vessels or nearby organs such as the lungs, heart, or liver. With three or more adjacent ribs being cracked or broken in two places, you can suffer from a condition known as flail chest.

A flail chest occurs when a portion of the chest wall destabilizes. The condition is associated with considerable morbidity and mortality.

A flail chest needs treatment as a severe injury, and a doctor will have to protect your lungs while ensuring that you can breathe adequately. You might need an oxygen mask to assist with breathing while taking medication to ease the pain.

If there is an underlying lung injury, you can require a mechanical ventilator to stabilize the chest cavity. It is also possible that surgery may be necessary, depending on the extent of your injury and risks.

Broken ribs can again injure blood vessels or other internal organs. Possible complications may include a torn or punctured aorta from the sharp end of a break in one of the first three ribs at the top of your rib cage, a punctured or collapsed lung from a jagged end of a broken middle rib, and lacerated spleens, livers, or kidneys when the broken ends of the bottom two ribs damage these organs.

Other rib injuries may include soft tissue injuries when the muscles and tissues surrounding the ribs allowing for the ribcage to expand and contract while you breathe and move are damaged. Soft tissue rib injuries can become extremely painful when people try to move, and their respiration can also suffer.

Separation happens when your rib tears away from the cartilage connecting it to the breastbone, and the injury is often the result of a sudden impact on the chest. While less serious cases can involve separated ribs you treat with rest and pain medication, severe cases may damage other internal organs.

Muscle strains are injuries affecting the muscles between two or more ribs. The muscles involve different layers attached to the ribs to help build your chest wall and assist you in breathing.

Signs and symptoms of a muscle strain may include:

• stiffness and tension in your muscles that causes upper back pain
• sharp upper back or rib pain
• worsening pain when you cough, sneeze, or breathe in deeply
• spasms of your intercostal muscles
• gradual worsening pain after repetitive movements
• tenderness in the area between your ribs
• muscle rigidity when you are bending or twisting your upper body

Any pain or discomfort warrants getting medical care to diagnose and begin treating a potentially broken rib.

Knowledge Equals Power in Auto Accident Cases

If you have any of these symptoms after your car crash, you must seek immediate medical attention. Once you have medical attention, you need to start healing. Then contact a car accident lawyer to help you get the compensation you need to cover your medical costs. The other person’s insurance does not automatically cover these costs, and you may need a lawyer to avoid paying for another driver’s mistakes. Call us today for your consultation.

Insurance companies rarely play fair in their evaluation of rib injuries, so retain legal counsel for the best chance to recover as much financial compensation as possible. An attorney can accurately assess all the costs you will be dealing with to treat your rib injuries.

Never accept the first settlement offer you receive from an insurer because the insurance company will deliberately undervalue your claim to close your case for as little as possible. Even when a proposed settlement sounds like a fair amount to you, you might still have many more medical bills on the horizon for future medical costs.

Broken ribs can involve not only medical bills but lost income when doctors order people to rest to recuperate, future surgical costs, and many other kinds of bills. A lawyer will work hard so you receive the fair and full compensation to cover all of these costs and do not have to pay anything out of your own pocket.

In addition, you may recover non-economic damages for subjective, non-monetary losses such as pain and suffering, inconvenience, and loss of enjoyment of life. Insurance companies never willingly compensate people for these damages, another major reason to secure legal representation so you can recover what you truly need and deserve.
Call us today to schedule your consultation.