Chronic pain is common among those who suffer from spinal cord injuries. Many times, the spinal cord injuries are attributed to injuries sustained at work or through a motor vehicle accident. While many would argue that lower back pain is debilitating and worse than any other, the fact remains that upper back injury, which involves the thoracic and cervical vertebrae, can be far worse debilitating, especially when pain radiates to the entire lower region.
The extreme and chronic neuropathic pain associated with thoracic and cervical back injury is often misunderstood. Because the pain can fall either at the level of injury or below the location of injury, patients who suffer from chronic neuropathic pain, or central pain, often find they are in a state of flux in terms of managing the neuropathic pain.
In some patients, with chronic back pain, the pain is localized to the area of injury. In other back injury patients, the injury results in chronic pain, or central pain, that radiates down from the location of injury to the entire back and even into the lower extremities.
In an effort to determine why some spinal cord injury patients suffer from radiating chronic pain while others suffer from no pain other than that which is localized to the injury, many research studies have been conducted in an effort to explain this phenomenon without success.
Within some research, it has been found that pain may be associated with hypersensitive neurons and, in most cases, these hypersensitive neurons are triggered, resulting in a transmission of chronic pain, or central pain, for as long as six months, post injury. Once chronic pain sets in, the duration of pain averages as long as 14 years.
If you are a patient who has suffered from a back injury, either from an injury at work or an injury resulting from a motor vehicle accident, it is, therefore, important to defer the payment and settlement of any medical claims, or bodily injury claims, for several months. Delaying this settlement, for as long as one year, will allow your body to naturally heal from the injury and then develop any chronic pain associated with the spinal cord injury.
When considering settlement for your spinal cord injury, especially after the development of chronic pain at the level of injury or radiating downward, be certain to include the settlement for future medical benefits and pain and suffering in relation to that chronic pain which could last for as long as 14 years, according to research statistics.
