Back and Leg Pain After a Car Accident: What Does it Mean?
After a car accident, it is very common to experience pain in the back that feels like it is radiating into your leg. This pain can cause severe difficulty with activities like sitting and walking, which can significantly limit your daily function. In this post, I will examine the most common causes of this pattern of pain.
Back and Leg Anatomy
For a good explanation and illustration of the anatomy of the low back, as well as a description of common low back injuries experienced after a car accident, I recommend checking out this post before reading the rest of this section.
When the pain starts in your back and radiates down the leg, there are two main considerations: the nerves that exit the back and descend into the legs; or the joints in your spine, which are called facet joints. In particular, there are 8 nerves from the low back (L1-S3) that have segments that travel into the low back; of these 8 nerves, 6 have segments that make up the sciatic nerve.
In regard to the facet joints, there are a pair of facet joints between every set of vertebrae in your spine, one on each side of the spine
Low Back Nerves
The most common reason to experience both low back and leg pain is due to irritation or damage to the nerves in your low back. In general, if the pain is worse on one side of your back and only travels down one leg, this indicates dysfunction of one of the nerve roots; if the pain travels down both legs, it is possible that you have damaged nerve roots on each side of the spine and/or damaged the spinal cord itself.
The most common descriptions people use for nerve pain in the legs are burning, numbness, and tingling. If this is how you would describe your pain, it is very likely one of your nerves is causing the problem. The most common reason that you will experience nerve pain in your legs after an accident is due to a herniated disc, which is either pressing on the nerve root (pain in one leg) or the spinal cord (pain in both legs). The good news is, a significant proportion of disc herniations spontaneously resorb, and there are techniques and exercises that therapists use to facilitate this process and/or minimize the symptoms the herniated disc causes.
It is also possible that you only experience nerve pain in the leg, and not the back. While this can be due to injury to nerves in your back as well, another common cause of this pain is damage to the sciatic nerve – which is formed from the nerves in the back – as it travels through the hip region. If you felt like you hit your buttocks rather hard during the accident, or fell off a motorcycle onto your buttocks, this could certainly be the cause of your pain.
Facet Joints
The facet joints in your low back can also cause pain into the leg; this is called sclerogenic pain. With this type of injury, the most common words used to describe the pain are aching and shooting. This pain can often occur with prolonged sitting, as well as with back extension and bending toward the side of the injury. Physical therapists and chiropractors are very good at treating these injuries and will typically use a combination of manipulations, joint mobilizations, and exercises to improve the joint’s motion and heal the injury.
Summary
If you are having pain in the low back that travels into the leg, the two most common causes are injury to the nerves in the low back and/or the facet joints. These two injuries have different presentations that help differentiate which one is causing your pain and are commonly treated with conservative care, such as physical therapy or chiropractic care.
Western Slope Rehab and Performance is Here to Help
If you are struggling with injuries or have recently been in a motor vehicle accident, we can help. We are a physical therapy company that provides home-based orthopedic services in the Grand Junction, CO, area, as well as telehealth appointments throughout Colorado. If you would like to schedule a free consultation, you can call us as 970-462-9177, or fill out our contact form here.
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