Oregon Spinal Injury Lawyer
Portland Personal Injury Lawyer and Retired Doctor of Chiropractic, Aaron DeShaw, addresses our law firm's experience handling serious spinal injury cases, including spinal injuries with CSF leaks.
I'd like to address the issue of chronic spinal pain after an injury.
Some of the medical profession, and the insurance industry has a mistaken belief that every spinal injury case gets better within 6 to 12 weeks. And the reality is that there is no scientific substantiation for that position whatsoever. There has never been a peer reviewed medical journal article that proves that everyone heals from spinal injuries in 6 to 12 weeks. In fact, there are 90 medical journal articles staring in 1956 with an article published in the Journal of the AMA, that prove that people with traumatic spinal injuries end up having lifelong pain. In these 90 journal articles the percentage of people with chronic spinal pain after injury is substantial. Several of these medical journal articles demonstrate that as high as 86% of all people with traumatic spine injuries have permanent spinal pain.
CSF Leak Spinal Injury Lawyer
Our Oregon personal injury law firm is known for handling highly complex medical injuries after trauma. One of the injuries that we are recognizing more recently are cerebrospinal fluid leaks in the spine after an injury. The spinal column that surrounds the spinal cord has a fluid in it called cerebrospinal fluid (or "CSF") and this fluid that surrounds the brain and spinal cord is generated in the brain and goes down the spine all the way down to your sacrum at the bottom of the spine. The cerebral spinal fluid is consistently being generated in the brain, shuttled down to the sacrum and then being re shuttled back up into the brain. I know this because I used to be a Doctor of Chiropractic before I was a lawyer.
So what we've realized most recently is trauma can create small tears in the spinal column, often in the neck or the low back, and the cerebral spinal fluid is actually leaking through those tears. Now not a lot of doctors are considering this injury, but CSF leaks after trauma are substantiated in the scientific literature.
Treatments for Traumatic CSF Leaks:
There are three main treatments for CSF leaks;
- Epidural blood patch. This treatment involves taking a sample of a patient's own blood, then injecting it into the spinal canal. The blood cells form a clot in the area of the injury, which can create a patch to cover the area of CSF leak.
- Fibrin sealant. Fibrin sealant is made from substances in human plasma that help with blood clotting. Used alone or mixed with your blood, it is injected into the spinal canal to cover the area of damage and stop the CSF from leaking.
- Surgery. Some CSF leaks require a surgery. It is always better to try one of the more conservative methods before surgery. Surgery is performed only if the precise site of the leak is known. There are several types of surgical treatments that repair CSF leaks.
Oregon Spinal Injury Lawyer
We have an extensive history handling complex spinal fracture cases, spinal cord injuries, quadriplegia, disc herniations, vertebral instability, CSF leaks and other complex spinal injury cases. If you need an experienced spinal injury lawyer in Oregon or Washington for an injury that has caused chronic spinal pain, give our office a call at (503) 227-1233, or contact us by way of the website contact form. We'll set up a free consultation for you and discuss your injury and how we can best represent you in your personal injury case.