Migraine After a Car Accident

If you experience migraines after a head injury, go immediately to the emergency room to get checked for a brain injury.

Car accidents often have serious consequences in terms of injuries, property damage, and even deaths. Sometimes, injuries get worse in time if left untreated, or they are challenging to detect when they happen internally. The most serious internal injuries are those inflicted on vital organs like the brain or that cause internal bleeding.

If you have been in a car accident recently and you are experiencing migraines, it’s normal to be worried. Migraines and headaches are general symptoms that can be connected to a wide range of injuries and conditions, so they must be correlated to other symptoms or investigated thoroughly before a diagnosis is possible.

What Is a TBI?

In 2020, around 176 died each day from a TBI-related injury each day and more than 223,000 were hospitalized in 2019 for these injuries.

A TBI (traumatic brain injury) is an injury to the brain tissue that occurs during a traumatic event. During a car accident, several forces impact your body, from the backlash caused by the rapid movement of your head to hitting objects like the headrest or flying debris.

A traumatic brain injury, depending on its severity, can have multiple symptoms, both physical and psychological. They include:

• Loss of consciousness
• Confusion, disorientation
• Nausea, vomiting
• Blurred vision, ringing ears, or even changes in the way you feel, smell, and taste
• Light sensitivity
• Difficulty of speech
• Poor sleep
• Loss of balance
• Persistent headaches
• Convulsions and seizures
• Changes in the dilatation of the pupils, unrelated to the amount of light that comes in
• Clear liquid coming out from your nose or ears
• Loss of coordination
• Coma

If you have any of the above signs following a car accident, go to the emergency room. If you suspect something but the symptoms are not so severe, make an appointment with your GP for an evaluation, as car accidents may leave you with hidden injuries that can become more severe if left untreated.

Are Migraines a Possible Sign of TBI?

A migraine is a severe, persistent headache that can cause many other symptoms, like nausea and vomiting, dizziness, confusion, sensitivity to light and sound, tingling in your limbs or difficulty speaking.

As you can see, many migraine symptoms are also present in TBI, which is why it’s absolutely normal to correlate the two. If you do experience migraines after a head injury, go immediately to the emergency room to get checked for a brain injury. It may or may not be the cause of your throbbing headache, so it’s important to eliminate this possibility and avoid life-threatening complications.

In conclusion, you should definitely follow your intuition if you suspect that a traumatic brain injury might cause migraines after a car accident. Go to the doctor immediately and express your concern to them to get the proper tests and treatment.