Our client, a Navy veteran, was rear-ended in a motor vehicle crash and sustained injuries to his back, neck, and left knee.
The physical treatment was extensive. His left knee required arthroscopy with cartilage transplantation. His spine required lumbar medial branch blocks, radiofrequency ablation, and sacroiliac joint injections, a progression of interventional pain procedures that speaks to how persistent his symptoms were.
The rest of what he lived with does not appear in an operative report. He developed PTSD, anxiety, sleep problems, erectile dysfunction, and irritability that affected the people closest to him.
Under Louisiana law, all these consequences are compensable. The Townsley Law Firm recovered a settlement of over $875,000 on behalf of our client.
The Injuries No One Talks About
There is a category of crash injury that goes unmentioned in most legal marketing, and often in the exam room too. Sexual dysfunction after a serious collision is one of them.
Erectile dysfunction following a crash can arise from several directions. Nerve involvement from spinal injury, particularly in the lumbar and sacral region, can affect sexual function directly. Chronic pain interferes with intimacy on its own. Medications used to manage pain, anxiety, and depression commonly carry sexual side effects. The psychological weight of PTSD, anxiety, and disrupted sleep affects intimacy in ways that compound the physical causes.
For our client, who was already dealing with lumbar and sacroiliac involvement significant enough to require nerve blocks and radiofrequency ablation, this was not an unrelated coincidence. It was part of the same injury picture.
Louisiana law recognizes these losses. They fall within physical pain and suffering, mental anguish, and loss of enjoyment of life, and where a spouse is affected, the law also recognizes loss of consortium. Raising concerns requires candor with your doctors and your attorney, which is uncomfortable. It is also the only way these losses become part of the record and part of the recovery.
PTSD After a Crash, and What It Means for a Veteran
Post-traumatic stress disorder is also a recognized consequence of serious motor vehicle collisions. Symptoms can include intrusive memories of the crash, avoidance of driving or of the location where it happened, hypervigilance, exaggerated startle response, irritability, sleep disturbance, and emotional numbness.
Our client’s presentation, PTSD alongside anxiety, sleep problems, and irritability, is a recognizable cluster. These symptoms feed each other. Poor sleep worsens irritability and pain tolerance. Hypervigilance makes rest harder. Chronic pain deepens anxiety and depression.
For a veteran, there is an additional consideration that insurers sometimes try to use as a defense. If a person has any prior trauma history, the argument surfaces that the psychological injury was pre-existing rather than crash related. Louisiana law does not accept that as a shield. Aggravation of a pre-existing condition is compensable.
Reading the Treatment: What These Procedures Tell You
The medical record in this case tracks a person whose pain was not resolved on its own.
Knee arthroscopy with cartilage transplantation. Arthroscopy is minimally invasive knee surgery performed through small incisions with a camera. Cartilage transplantation goes further, replacing damaged cartilage to restore the joint surface. It is not a routine procedure. It reflects meaningful structural damage inside the joint.
Lumbar medial branch blocks. These target the small nerves supplying the facet joints of the spine. They serve as both treatment and diagnosis because relief following the block helps confirm the facet joints as the pain source.
Radiofrequency ablation. When medial branch blocks provide relief, ablation uses heat to interrupt those nerves for a longer period. It is a step taken when pain has proven persistent and other approaches have not held.
Sacroiliac joint injections. These target the joint connecting the spine to the pelvis, another common source of low back and hip pain after a crash.
That progression, from diagnostic blocks to ablation to additional joint injections, is the signature of chronic pain rather than a minor injury that resolved.
