Hurt in a Car Accident in
Florissant or North County?

You want a physician who evaluates injury specifically — muscles, joints, spine, and nerves — rather than general symptom management. After a collision, the questions that matter are which structures were injured, whether a nerve is involved, and what the objective findings actually show. Dr. Shekhani has spent more than thirty years evaluating and treating injured patients, and performs the diagnostic testing in-office rather than sending you elsewhere and waiting on a report. The practice sees patients from Florissant, Hazelwood, Ferguson, Bellefontaine Neighbors, Black Jack, Bridgeton, Spanish Lake, and across the greater St. Louis area. Call (314) 733-5140.

Feeling fine on day one is common, and it is not the same as being uninjured. Adrenaline suppresses pain in the hours after a crash, and the inflammatory response that follows a soft tissue or disc injury builds over the next several days. Neck stiffness, headaches, low back pain, and numbness or tingling in an arm or leg frequently show up two to seven days after the collision, sometimes later. An early evaluation establishes a baseline — what was and was not present right after the crash — which matters both clinically and for the medical record.

Whiplash is the injury pattern that results when the head and neck are thrown rapidly forward and back, straining the muscles, ligaments, and joints of the cervical spine. It commonly produces neck pain and stiffness, headaches originating at the base of the skull, shoulder and upper back pain, and sometimes dizziness or pain radiating into an arm. Because the injured structures are soft tissue, a standard X-ray is often normal even when a real injury is present. Diagnosis comes from a thorough physical examination combined, where indicated, with diagnostic ultrasound to visualize soft tissue in real time and electrodiagnostic testing when nerve involvement is suspected. More about whiplash and neck injury.

It depends entirely on what the examination finds — testing is ordered to answer a specific question, not by default. If you have numbness, tingling, weakness, or pain radiating down an arm or leg, an EMG and nerve conduction study measures whether a nerve is actually compressed or damaged, and where. For tendon, ligament, muscle, and joint injury, diagnostic musculoskeletal ultrasound images those structures in real time and while you move, which a static scan cannot do. MRI or CT may be appropriate for suspected disc or structural injury and would be ordered through an imaging center. Dr. Shekhani will explain which testing he recommends and what question it is meant to answer before anything is scheduled.

Cost is the reason many people delay care after a collision, and it does not have to be. Dr. Shekhani treats car accident patients on a letter of protection or medical lien — treatment begins now, and payment is deferred until your case resolves, paid through your personal injury attorney out of the settlement. You are not asked to pay out of pocket at each visit while the case is pending.

This is an administrative arrangement handled between the office and your attorney. It does not change the care you receive, the testing that is recommended, or what is documented in your medical record. If you carry health insurance or auto medical payments coverage, that may apply as well. Call (314) 733-5140 and the staff will walk through what fits your situation.

Neither of those changes whether you can be evaluated and treated. Fault and coverage are legal and insurance questions, and how they affect a particular claim depends on facts this practice is not in a position to assess — that is a conversation for an attorney, not a medical office. What Dr. Shekhani can do is determine what is injured and treat it. Call the office, explain where things stand, and the staff will tell you what options apply.

There is no single answer, and anyone who gives you one before examining you is guessing. A soft tissue injury with no nerve involvement often follows a shorter course than a disc injury or a nerve injury confirmed on EMG. What shapes the timeline is the structure involved, the severity, how quickly care started, and how the injury responds to treatment. Dr. Shekhani will give you a realistic picture after the evaluation and diagnostic testing, and will reassess as you progress rather than committing you to a fixed number of visits at the outset. Most new patients across North County and the St. Louis area are scheduled within three business days.