Undiagnosed Problems
Ligament issues are one of the most common injuries that go undiagnosed.
One of the most common and severe types of ligament injuries is called alteration of motion spinal integrity, also known as AOMSI.
Not only is it permanent, but with each segment that is involved, it comes with a 25% whole body impairment rating.
If you are diagnosed with a 25% whole body impairment rating, an attorney is probably going to say, “We need to get some more money because you are going to be impaired for the rest of your life with a quarter of your body. That’s HUGE.”
That’s why it’s a problem that ligament injuries are not diagnosed as much as they should be. There are a couple of reasons for that.
- Doctors don’t know what they are.
- They don’t know how to find them — and if you don’t know how to find them, you can’t diagnose them.
That’s also why we’ll see a lot of people who go through different kinds of therapies hit a wall. Nothing gets better, and no one can help because they were diagnosed with a sprain or strain, and at that point, the system let them down.
You need to make sure you go through this process the right way.
From your attorney’s standpoint, if you were diagnosed with a sprain or strain and you didn’t get any better after your three months of PT and they went through on that diagnosis, you’re pretty much out of options at that point.
Importance of Documentation
It all goes back to documentation.
The sooner you can get into a doctor, the sooner you can get documented, the sooner you find these things out, the better — because it increases the value of your case, and there might not be enough available insurance.
Illinois only requires you to carry $25,000 worth of insurance, which is not a lot, but if there is available insurance, that’s going to ensure that you get more of that. You can use it to help you as you age and as you progress because you’re not going to improve.
More Commonly Undiagnosed Problems
Concussions and traumatic brain injury also often goes undiagnosed.
Emergency rooms are not, as far as I understand it, designed to diagnose these kinds of injuries. They’re designed to triage.
They’re going to take a CT scan of your brain, which is like taking a Polaroid picture of your house and putting it on Zillow. You understand what the house looks like, but you’re not going to sell it.
The same goes for or any sort of coup-contrecoup, whiplash related brain injury.
Your brain’s bouncing around in fluid inside your skull, and it’s going hit the front and back of your skull. You are going to get injuries to your brain, you’re going to get shearing injuries.
The end goal is get into your primary care doctor. Explain to them that you have headaches, aversion to light, sound, and whatever else your symptoms are.
You have to be very, very clear and very, very much an over-sharer when it comes to your symptoms.
That way, none of these things can go undiagnosed if you’re telling your doctor everything.
A lot of times we’ll get patients that come in that have already gone to the ER, and I’ll notice that they have a slow response.
They’re having trouble remembering things, sensitivity to light, maybe even some slurring of speech — at that time, we’re dealing with post-concussion syndrome, so we need to get them to a neurologist.
That way, they can at least document what’s going on and see what happens at that point.