Children's Injuries

Oftentimes, a parent’s first reaction to an accident is to rush his or her child to an emergency room or a family pediatrician to assess the extent of the injuries. While these physicians are often experts at assessing and treating life-threatening traumatic injuries, they often lack the necessary training to detect trauma to normal joint and spine function.

Abnormal joint function and misalignment of spinal bones cause a wide variety of conditions which may or may not produce immediate symptoms. Any traumatic changes that cause misalignments of the spinal bones can lead to structural problems, including premature degenerative changes and alterations in the normal muscular and ligamentous development of the spine and related joints. Left untreated, this will cause permanent changes in the spine and may lead to a wide variety of symptoms later in life, including bone degeneration, chronic pain, sleeping disorders, asymmetric motor patterns and alteration of posture.

Many medical physicians are misinformed about the biomechanics of children’s joints, muscular development and their lack of ligamentous development. They often discourage parents from having children evaluated by a chiropractic specialist after being involved in minor accidents. This gives the impression to others that children are not injured in a similar fashion as adults. The fact is that children are at a much higher risk from traumatic injury than adults. This is why:

• Lax ligaments in a child's back and neck allow a significant degree of spinal mobility, resulting in a misalignment of the joint, known as a chiropractic subluxation.
• In a child’s body, the fulcrum of the cervical movement is located higher. In other words, a heavy head on a small body results in higher torques being applied to the neck. Consequently, children have heightened susceptibility to flexion/extension injuries and subluxation in the upper cervical regions of the spine.
• A child’s cervical musculature is not fully developed resulting in less support and protection for the spine.

Children often appear to bounce back from even the most severe injuries. This does not mean that the child has fully healed, rather the child’s inability to articulate allows everyone to assume there is nothing wrong. If any injury is left untreated, it may result in abnormal spinal development, which may cause permanent changes in the child's spine. This will lead to problems later in life.

If your child has been involved in any type of accident, call our office to schedule an appointment for an evaluation. Our team maintains a state-of-the-art diagnostic facility and is specially trained to diagnose and treat children’s spinal injuries with gentle and non-invasive measures.

Your child will be in caring hands