Chest injuries are among the most common injuries in car accidents, and they range from soreness that fades in a few days to internal damage that can become life-threatening. Part of what makes them dangerous is that the serious ones aren’t always obvious at first. Someone can walk away from a crash with what feels like bad bruising and actually have a broken rib or an injured lung.
Contact a car accident attorney in St. Louis today to pursue financial compensation.
Call (314) 300-6260.
How Chest Injuries Happen in a Crash
In a collision, the chest usually takes the impact from one of three sources. The seatbelt locks across the chest to hold the body in place, and the force of stopping gets absorbed largely through the ribs and sternum. The steering wheel is a hazard for drivers, especially in frontal crashes or when the airbag doesn’t deploy. And the airbag itself, while it saves lives, deploys with enough force to bruise the chest and sometimes crack ribs.
That doesn’t mean seatbelts and airbags are the problem; the injuries they cause are almost always less severe than the ones they prevent. It just means that even when the safety equipment works exactly as designed, the chest often takes some of the force.
Common Chest Injuries From Car Accidents
Some chest injuries that often show up after car accidents include:
- Bruised ribs and chest wall injuries: Painful but usually not dangerous, these can make breathing, coughing, and sleeping difficult for weeks.
- Broken ribs: A fractured rib is painful on its own, but the bigger concern is what a sharp edge of bone can do to the lung or blood vessels underneath it.
- Sternum fractures: The breastbone can crack against the seatbelt or steering wheel, and doctors often check the heart when this injury is present.
- Pulmonary contusion: A bruised lung, where blood collects in the lung tissue and interferes with breathing. Symptoms can get worse over the first day or two.
- Collapsed lung: Air escaping into the chest cavity can cause part or all of a lung to collapse, which may require emergency treatment.
- Internal injuries: The heart, aorta, spleen, and liver can all be injured by blunt force to the chest and upper abdomen, sometimes with little external sign.
The serious injuries on this list aren’t always clear to the person who is injured. It’s always a good plan to get medical treatment as soon as possible.
How a Lawyer Can Help After a Chest Injury
Chest injuries can mean emergency care, imaging, follow-up visits, and weeks or months of limited activity. Insurance companies tend to undervalue these injuries when they don’t require surgery, even when they seriously disrupt someone’s life. A car accident lawyer can make sure your claim reflects what you actually went through by taking the following steps:
Document the Injury and Its Treatment
A lawyer gathers the ER records, imaging, and follow-up notes that show what the crash did to you, including monitoring for internal injuries even if nothing ended up requiring surgery.
Show the Impact on Your Daily Life
Broken ribs and chest injuries make basic things painful, like, sleeping, lifting, driving, playing with your kids, and going to work. An injury lawyer in St. Louis will document the limitations, missed income, and any lingering pain so the claim covers more than just the medical bills.
Push Back on Lowball Offers
Adjusters often treat non-surgical chest injuries as minor, and this is reflected in their settlement offers. Your lawyer handles the negotiations and challenges any low offers they make. This means you won’t settle for less than what you should.
If you suffered a chest injury in a crash and the settlement offer doesn’t reflect what you went through, it’s worth talking to a car accident before taking any other steps.
Call today at (314) 300-6260 to schedule a free consultation.