ABSTRACT
By evaluating cases directly from primary care, this chapter assesses an essentially non-selected sample of whiplash patients chosen according to clearly defined injury criteria. This design allows the unbiased evaluation of the significance of different aspects of the patient’s history, various initial somatic and psychosocial factors, x-ray findings and features of injury mechanism as they may influence recovery from this type of injury. The patients with a history of pretraumatic headache may be more susceptible to display symptoms following whiplash injury, headache being one of the prominent complaints because of headache-triggering based on a preformed pattern. The chapter suggests that a comprehensive multidisciplinary initial assessment of whiplash patients may help to identify patients at risk of poor prognosis, as well as to understand the course of psychological and cognitive factors in the long term. The number of patients in the study was a reasonable representation of the total number of people with whiplash injuries in the catchment area.
