INJURY | PERSONAL INJURY LAWYER | PERSONAL INJURY ATTORNEY | INJURIES

Body and limb injuries can occur for many reasons, including during vehicle collisions, while participating in sports, during falls, or because of medical mistakes.

Body and limb injuries include knee, foot and shoulder injuries, as well as disfigurement, loss of mobility and broken bones. Statistics vary depending upon the event that caused the injury. For example:

• Skiers are twice as likely to injure their lower limbs
• Offshore workers are more likely to injure their upper limbs, including their hands, wrists and arms
• Pedestrians hit by cars are most likely to suffer lower limb injuries
• People who slip and fall are most likely to injure their hips, backs and wrists

 

Shoulder injuries can be debilitating. It’s not only hard to move your arm, it can hurt to breathe. Daily activities become close to impossible. The shoulder is the point where any arm movement begins, and any strength you have depends on your shoulder to act as the point of rotation and movement. Daily activities like brushing teeth, driving a car, and lifting a bag can be very painful. Shoulder injuries include:

• broken collarbones
  • This is an impact injury, usually occurring when a person falls or is hit hard. Collarbones can also break when babies are being delivered because they bend and snap while trying to fit in the birth canal. The collarbone helps connect the arm to the body, so any arm movement will cause severe pain when a person has a broken collarbone.
• dislocation
  • Dislocation occurs when ligaments inside the shoulder become stretched or damaged to the point that they can no longer hold the shoulder in place. Once a dislocation occurs, it is more likely to happen again.
• rotator cuff injury
  • This is a common injury for people who play sports, especially those that require throwing or catching. The rotator cuff is the shoulder joint, and it contains many tendons and ligaments. These can snap, tear, stretch, get inflamed, develop tendonitis, or otherwise get damaged.
• arthritis
  • Arthritis occurs because of continued trauma, infection, mineral deposits and/or aging in the joints. Arthritis is very painful, can cause the joint to swell, and limits movement in the joint.
• AC joint separation
  • This is the joint where the collarbone meets the shoulder. This can become separated, much like a dislocation.

There are many exercises you can do to strengthen and protect your shoulders. You can keep your elbow by your side, hold your hands parallel to the ground, and rotate your lower arm in and out away from your body while pulling a pulley weight across and away from your body. This is called an external rotation. You can also do an internal rotation, which is the same thing except that you are pulling the weight in toward your stomach. You can do an extension, in which you stand facing the pulley weight, again bend your elbows and place your hands in front of you, and pull the weight toward the side of your body so that your elbows go behind your body and then back to your sides. Consider having a trainer at your local gym show you the exercises as well. If you injured your shoulder in a car accident or a workplace accident, contact a personal injury attorney immediately.