In the moments after a car crash, as your sense of panic diminishes and your ability to comprehend the situation improves, you will likely start to evaluate yourself and the other people in your vehicle for the signs of an injury.
Broken bones and severe traumatic injuries like amputations or deep wounds are obvious immediately, but there are other, potentially severe, medical conditions that might not seem as obvious at the time of the crash.
As such, those who experienced a severe crash, especially one powerful enough to demolish a vehicle, may want to err on the side of caution and seek a medical evaluation in order to rule out the potential for severe but invisible crash-related injuries causing long-term damage.
Not all bleeding is instantly visible
If you suffer blunt force trauma to the abdomen, the result could well be dangerous internal bleeding. The same is true if you take a blow to the chest, as you could have experienced pooling of blood in your lungs, rather than in the abdominal cavity.
It isn’t always obvious that you have internal bleeding in the moments after a crash. Only hours or even days later when you begin to exhibit symptoms will the severity of your injuries become apparent. The sooner you get evaluated for internal bleeding, the sooner medical professionals can diagnose it and reduce its impact on your health.
Brain injuries are also often slow to show symptoms
Traumatic brain injuries are among the worst possible injuries a person can suffer, and yet they aren’t always obvious immediately after someone gets hurt.
It can take some time for the bruising or bleeding on the brain to produce obvious symptoms, and those symptoms will vary drastically depending on someone’s neurology and the location of the injury. Again, a faster diagnosis will result in a better prognosis for a patient with a head injury.
As if reducing your risk of a potentially fatal injury wasn’t a compelling enough reason to see a physician, the sooner a doctor diagnoses you after a crash, the easier it will be to prove that the injuries have a relationship with a collision you experienced.
