The crash left me with a herniated disc. What should I know?

What a herniated disc is

The discs between the bones of your spine are cushions with a tough outer ring and a softer center. A crash can tear that outer ring and push the center out through it — a herniated disc, sometimes called a ruptured or slipped disc. A bulging disc, where the disc pushes outward without breaking through, is a related injury. When the disc presses on a nerve, the pain often travels: from the neck into the shoulder and arm, or from the lower back into the buttock and leg. Numbness, tingling and weakness are common. Disc injuries are a common cause of lasting neck and back pain after car and truck crashes.

The insurer’s first argument: “it was already there”

Most adults’ spines show some wear by middle age, and the MRI taken after a crash will often mention “degenerative” changes. Insurers use that word to argue the disc problem existed before the crash and has nothing to do with it.

Texas law does not let them off that easily. A person whose pre-existing condition is made worse by someone else’s negligence can recover for the aggravation — the pain, treatment and limits that came from the crash — even if the condition itself was already there. The real question is what changed. Someone who had a healthy, active life with no back treatment, and has needed injections or surgery since the crash, has a strong answer. Earlier medical records, or the absence of them, and the testimony of the treating doctor are how that question gets answered.

The second argument: gaps in treatment

If weeks go by without treatment, the insurer will argue you must have healed, or that something else caused the later pain. People stop treatment for ordinary reasons — work, cost, child care, a doctor who was booked out — but the gap will be used anyway. Consistent treatment, and a clear record of why any gap happened, protects the claim.

How treatment usually progresses

Disc injuries are usually treated conservatively first: rest, medication, and physical therapy or chiropractic care. If the pain continues, a doctor may recommend imaging and injections, such as epidural steroid injections. When conservative care does not work, or when there is significant or worsening weakness, or loss of bladder or bowel control, surgery may be recommended — from a discectomy to remove the herniated portion, to a fusion of two or more vertebrae. Each step changes the value of a claim, and so does the likelihood of future treatment. A fusion, for example, can affect the neighboring levels of the spine over time.

What the claim includes

Texas allows recovery for past and future medical care, lost income and earning capacity, pain, mental anguish, and physical impairment. For medical bills, Texas limits recovery to the amounts actually paid or owed, not the higher amounts on the original bill, which means the way your care is paid for — health insurance, PIP, or treatment on a letter of protection — matters to the final number. A settlement also has to account for liens from health insurers and hospitals. Those are details to plan for from the start, not discover at the end.

A disc case should not be settled before you know where treatment is heading. An offer made before an injection or surgery has been recommended almost never accounts for it.

Neck injuries and “just whiplash”

Many disc injuries start as what looks like whiplash: a sore, stiff neck after a rear-end crash. Most whiplash improves with time and therapy. But when neck pain does not improve, or when it starts traveling into the shoulder, arm or hand with numbness or weakness, that can be a sign of a disc pressing on a nerve in the cervical spine. Insurers like the word “whiplash” because it sounds minor. What matters is what the imaging and the treating doctor show, which is why symptoms that are not getting better need to be reported rather than waited out.

Authority: Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 41.0105 (paid or incurred) · Haygood v. De Escabedo, 356 S.W.3d 390 (Tex. 2011)