What are the Hardest Injuries to Prove?

Proving an Injury Occurred for Your Personal Injury Claim

Depending on the circumstances surrounding your injury, proving that an injury occurred can be as simple as providing an X-ray of a broken bone as evidence. However, there are some injuries that are unseen and difficult to diagnose. While proving that your injury led to disfiguring lacerations may be noticeable and require images and medical records, proving something like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) could require a lot more evidence and be subjective in review.

Understanding how to prove pain and suffering in situations where your pain isn’t apparent and your suffering isn’t showing up in medical imaging is essential to supporting your personal injury claim.

So, what are the most difficult injuries to prove in personal injury cases?

In The Article

Soft tissue injuries

Why Are Soft Tissue Injuries Difficult to Prove?

Soft tissue injuries are injuries to muscles, tendons, and ligaments. According to The Cleveland Clinic, soft tissues are “the tissues that support your skeleton and help it move.” Injuries to soft tissue can include:

• Sprains
• Strains
• Contusions

Soft tissue injuries can be hard to prove because they are often unseen. While contusions are bruises, strains and sprains don’t necessarily show up. Although swelling may occur in early stages of sprains and strains, muscle and tendon pain can continue even after swelling recedes.

How to Prove You Have a Soft Tissue Injury

Proving you have a soft tissue injury after an accident requires extensive medical records. Having your doctor test for soft tissue injuries with an MRI or CT scan could be difficult but is one of the better ways to collect evidence to prove your injury.

If you’re having difficulty getting proper medical help after an accident, a personal injury lawyer can work to get you the imaging you need for evidence in a personal injury case.

In addition to medical imaging, seeing a physical therapist for soft tissue injuries can help you prove your case. Make sure your physical therapist takes diligent notes regarding your pain, injury, and recovery.

Nerve Damage After an Accident

Why is Nerve Damage So Difficult to Prove?

Nerve damage presents itself in different ways, causing it to become subjective when reviewed by those who are not in the medical field. Nerve damage or neuropathic pain can feel like:

• Burning
• Electric shocks
• Freezing
• Stabbing sensation

These variations can make it difficult to prove that you have pain caused by an injury.

It is also difficult to prove nerve pain because you may experience these symptoms in areas where you were not injured. According to the Cleveland Clinic, “Damaged nerve fibers send the wrong signals to pain centers in your body, resulting in neuropathic pain.” This can make it difficult to prove that your nerve damage was caused by your injury, especially if your nerve damage doesn’t lead to visible responses like twitching or loss of function in your extremities. However, there are ways to prove that you have nerve damage as a result of your accident.

How to Prove Nerve Damage

As with any injury, obtaining extensive medical records can help you prove that you have nerve damage. According to the Mayo Clinic, diagnostic tests can help you prove that you suffer from nerve damage. These diagnostic tests can include:

• X-rays
• A Nerve Conduction study
• Electromyography (EMG)
• Blood tests
• An MRI
• Spinal Tap/Lumbar Puncture
• High-Resolution Ultrasound

Some of these tests may be difficult and costly (as there are insurance companies that won’t cover them). It can also take quite a while to get them scheduled. However, the results from these tests can help you prove your case if you have nerve damage after an accident.

Moreover, seeing a physical therapist and keeping a pain diary can help you show how your life has changed due to nerve damage after an accident. In your diary, be sure to detail what your life was like before the accident and anything you can no longer do due to the nerve pain.

PTSD

Why is PTSD So Difficult to Prove?

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) “is a mental health condition caused by an extremely stressful or terrifying event.” What makes PTSD so difficult to prove is the fact that traumatic events have different mental health effects on everyone; people respond to stressful and scary situations differently.

Because “not everyone who lives through a dangerous event develops PTSD,” insurance companies and defendants in personal injury cases may argue that an injury victim is faking the symptoms of PTSD.

It’s also difficult to prove that you suffer from PTSD because symptoms can vary from person to person. Some symptoms of PTSD could include:

• Nightmares
• Flashbacks
• Sleeplessness
• Anxiety
• A numb feeling
• Inability to focus
• Bedwetting (mostly seen in children)
• Avoiding places/actions connected to the traumatic experience
• Replaying the situation in your head over and over
• Hyperawareness
• Changes in mood or mood swings

Not everyone who has PTSD experiences all these symptoms, but people can experience multiple symptoms of PTSD, giving it a more subjective role in calculating damages.

How to Prove PTSD

Proving that you have PTSD after an injury requires a diagnosis. According to NYU Langone Health, to get a PTSD diagnosis, “a person must have at least one re-experiencing symptom, at least three avoidance symptoms, at least two negative alterations in mood and cognition, and at least two hyperarousal symptoms for a minimum of one month.” These types of symptoms can vary, and it’s essential to speak with a mental health expert who has extensive knowledge and experience with PTSD patients to ensure you get the proper attention for the diagnosis.

Like with proving nerve damage, you can also keep a PTSD diary to help you track how often you revisit or replay the experience, any rapid changes in mood and the circumstances that surrounded those changes, and any changes in sleep patterns. This can help you show that the incident that caused your injury directly coincided with your PTSD symptoms.

How a Personal Injury Lawyer Can Help You Prove the Extent of Your Injuries

Everyone experiences pain differently, and that can lead to subjectivity in how injuries are perceived. Therefore, a personal injury attorney can help you file your injury claim and tell your story to help you prove that your injuries led to losses as a result of someone else’s negligence. The experienced injury lawyers at Ron Bell have helped many people with “invisible injuries” tell their stories, calculate their damages, and get the recovery they deserve, even when greedy insurance companies fight back based on the subjective nature of certain injuries that are difficult to prove. Contact us today for your free case evaluation.