Dashboard Knee Injury From a Car Accident

A dashboard injury is an injury to the knee caused by the knee slamming forcefully against the dashboard. In the process, it pushes the tibia back and causes tears and injuries to the posterior cruciate ligament.

Symptoms of dashboard injury include pain, which can vary from mild to severe, immediate swelling and inflammation of the knee joint, and knee joint instability. All these will result in gait problems and a feeling of knee instability.

Dashboard injury doesn’t involve just the posterior cruciate ligament alone, but there could also be accompanying knee damage. Some of these include kneecap fracture, patellar dislocation, other ligament and tendon tears, bone contusion, and other soft tissue injuries.

Any injury will cause pain since it affects not only the soft tissues but the sensory nerves supplying them as well. Injuries are noxious stimuli, so the sensory nerves will continuously send pain signals to the brain. If the nerves themselves are injured, their normal functioning will be impaired. They could either not sense any stimulus or will continuously fire pain signals to the brain.

In addition to this, tissue damage will trigger the inflammatory process. It will cause the immune cells to migrate to the injury, control the irritants, and allow tissue healing. These immune cells also release a chemical called cytokines, and what they do is to “call other immune cells to help.”

Cytokines also irritate the nerve endings and are, in fact, one of the mediators of pain. They can even help worsen the sensation of pain by amplifying pain states.

The most common knee injury from car accidents is dashboard injury– also known as posterior cruciate ligament injury. Other knee injuries common in car accidents include patellar fracture and dislocation, damage to the other ligaments like anterior cruciate ligament, injury to the medial and lateral collateral ligaments, and meniscal injuries. All of these injuries can result in knee pain, inflammation, knee instability, painful gait, decreased knee range of motion, and muscle weakness.

Your doctor may order imaging studies like X-rays and MRIs to get a better assessment of your knee injuries. These will look for any fractures, dislocations, and torn ligaments.

Minor knee injuries usually only need rest, pain medication, anti-inflammatory medications, stretches, and exercises to strengthen knee muscles as well as prevent any range of motion limitations. Severe knee injuries like fractures, torn ligaments, torn tendons, and ruptured meniscus, then surgery and immobilization may be required. 

There are some knee pain treatments that you can do at home. For example, for the first two to three days, you can decrease your pain and swelling by placing ice wrapped in a towel over the area for a period of about 20 minutes. Do this therapy three times a day or more. It may not only reduce pain but decrease swelling as well.

After about three days, you can switch the cold pack to a warm compress. The heat also helps reduce pain and swelling by opening up the vessels and allowing the influx of blood to wash away the toxins and cellular debris caused by tissue damage. A warm compress can also help prepare your injured knee for stretching and range of motion exercises.

Another home treatment is wrapping your knee with a clean elastic bandage. It won’t help stabilize your knee, but it can help reduce swelling and pain.