What are the most common face injuries in car accidents? Some of the most common face injuries in car accidents are soft tissue injuries, broken facial bones, jaw injuries, eye injuries, broken, chipped, or lost teeth, burns, and concussions, among others.
Having an idea of the most common facial injuries in car accidents can help you understand your recovery process better and communicate with medical professionals and your Arlington car accident lawyer.
Common Car Accident Face Injuries to the Skin
Many common facial injuries in car accidents are easy to see due to them being on the skin or other parts that we can see without much effort. Whether we can feel them or not may depend on their severity and the degree of adrenaline and other hormones that were released upon impact. Getting these treated quickly can help prevent infection and severe scarring.
Lacerations
Lacerations are your classic cuts and general surface wounds of the skin. In the right places, these can bleed profusely without having much initial pain, and they can leave noticeable scars after healing. Delaying or denying professional treatment of these can lead to bad infections that hinder and lengthen the recovery process.
Bruises and Swelling
Bruises are usually caused by broken capillaries, the smallest blood vessels in the body, letting blood pool near the break. However, if larger blood vessels break, bruises can be much more severe, causing extreme pain, skin discoloration, and internal bleeding. These injuries can also lead to swelling, as can contusions, fractures, and sprains.
Burns
Depending on the nature of your car crash, hot debris and harmful chemicals can be sent flying at your face. Your skin could be burned to varying degrees from something akin to a rug burn to being fully singed to the bone. At first, these can look like irritated or even melting skin, but they can easily shift to showing large white blisters.
Sensory Injuries
The face is a hub for many of our sensory functions. Any injuries to the face will likely affect our ability to use these senses effectively. These are common car accident face injuries since the forces of a crash are usually very high.
Eye Injuries
Not all eye injuries are visible to others or even yourself, but they can easily affect our ability to see. The exposed parts of the eye can be cut, pierced, or dented by impacts or debris, while the internal parts of it can be punctured, broken, bruised, or detached all because of excessive force. You will readily know if your eyesight is affected, and other people can identify other indications of injury that you cannot see yourself.
Tongue Injuries
With so many things being jolted in so many directions, your tongue being forced into a compromising situation is as easy to happen as most other things. It could end up getting cut by a bite or punctured by flying debris. Your ability to taste or speak could be greatly impacted by this type of injury.
The Less Visible but Still Painful Common Car Accident Face Injuries
Certain common car crash face injuries are felt before they are seen, which does not make them any less serious. Car accidents cause a diverse array of injuries. Do not let these go untreated and unaddressed when you are looking into car accident settlements.
Fractures
Broken bones send sharp, shooting pain radiating out from the break itself and pose great risk if handled improperly before they are set to heal. What starts as a simple fracture with the parts of the bone still in place can easily become extremely displaced bones, tearing at other internal tissue and adding to injuries you did not have to start out with. These can get as severe as compound fractures, which visibly piece the skin, and lead to long-lasting disfigurement or disability if mishandled.
Dental Injuries
Teeth may be extremely strong, but a car crash exerts forces much more powerful than teeth were ever meant to handle. If your jaw or other parts of your face have also been injured, it may be less obvious that your teeth have been damaged due to difficulty accessing the inside of your mouth without aggravating other facial injuries. Unfortunately, teeth do not heal like skin or bones and may require extensive surgery to repair or replace them.
Injured Tendons and Ligaments
Tendons and ligaments are the connective tissues that link muscles to bones and bones to other bones. Your face has many of both of these that help keep everything in place. When subjected to the extreme forces of a car accident, these connectors can become torn, excessively strained or otherwise separated from bones and muscles, leading to potentially life-changing disfigurement or loss of motor functions.
Cartilage
Your nose, among other parts of the body, has a large internal structure of cartilage that gives it its core shape and structural support. While cartilage serves a similar function to bones, it is much softer than bones. Sometimes, this is beneficial since it can bend more than bones, but it could also simply tear or burn.
Why Facial Injuries are so Serious
We use our face for so many purposes in our daily lives that we do not consciously think of until our ability to use it is taken away. Our face is part of how we communicate with each other, show our identity to the world, and perform simple tasks like eating or reading. Suffering even the smallest injuries to your face can change your life in big ways that can hopefully be helped by filing a car accident case.
Eye injuries can cause loss of sight, making it impossible to perform your job or transport yourself. They can also create a social barrier between friends, family, or people with whom you need to communicate for other daily business.
A disabling injury to your mouth could completely affect your ability to speak, eat, and drink. Trying to find and learn alternative methods of verbal communication is no small task and comes with a huge time investment and money expenditure. The lasting effects of something like this deserve proper compensation from whoever caused your car accident face injuries.
Contact The Texas Law Dog: We Don’t Just Bark, We Bite
At The Texas Law Dog, our Arlington car accident lawyer is here to help you through this difficult time. We can represent your best interests and fight for the best possible outcome.
Schedule a consultation today to discuss the details of your injuries.
