If you’ve hurt your back, whether at work, in a car crash, or because of another person’s negligence, you may be struggling with ongoing pain, time away from work, and rising medical expenses because of your doctor visits.
You may be hearing terms like “bulging disc,” “herniated disc,” or “extruded disc” thrown around by medical professionals or insurance adjusters, and wonder whether any of it really matters.
In terms of a personal injury claim, these aren’t just medical terms. They describe different types of spinal injuries, and the difference can have a huge impact on your treatment plan, recovery time, and your right to fair compensation.
At Shapiro, Washburn & Sharp, our Virginia Beach personal injury attorneys have spent over 35 years representing clients who have suffered serious injuries. Best Lawyers® has recognized us as a Tier 1 personal injury law firm, and our lawyers understand how to prove the full medical and financial impact of back injuries, including future surgeries, rehabilitation, and loss of earning potential.
Below, we explain what these various types of back injuries mean for your recovery and your potential injury claim, and what you need to do to make sure you get a fair settlement. Meanwhile, if you or a loved one is dealing with this type of back injury, contact us at 833-997-1774 for a free consultation.
Why Does Diagnosis of the Injury Matter for Compensation?
When it comes to personal injury claims, not all back injuries are created equal. A “bulging disc” sounds serious, but it often results in far less compensation than an “extruded disc,” even though both can cause significant pain.
Insurance companies know that, so they’ll use any ambiguity in your medical records to try to pay you less than they should in a settlement.
At Shapiro, Washburn & Sharp, we have decades of experience fighting for injured clients, and we’ve learned that proper medical documentation of the injury is critical to a successful injury claim outcome. It’s not enough to know that you’re hurt—you need concrete evidence showing the exact nature and severity of the injury. That means getting the right diagnostic tests from your doctor and making sure they document every detail of your condition.
Without experienced legal representation, you may settle for compensation that covers today’s bills, but can leave you in financial dire straits when you need a spinal fusion five years down the road. We help make sure that doesn’t happen.
What Are the Three Main Types of Disc Injuries?
Your backbone is made up of a string of bones called vertebrae. They are stacked like blocks, one on top of the other, and between each is a cushion called an intervertebral disc. You can think of this disc like a jelly donut. There’s a tough, rubbery outer layer and a soft, gel-like center. These discs act as shock absorbers for your spine, allowing it to bend, twist, and handle the impacts of your daily activities. When everything is normal, these discs look round, full, and evenly structured between the vertebrae.
When an injury occurs, these discs may be damaged in various ways. The three main categories of disc injuries are as follows.
Bulging Disc: The Least Severe
A bulging disk occurs when the outer layer of the disc stays intact, but the entire disc starts to flatten out between the vertebrae. You can imagine squashing a jelly donut without breaking the dough—the filling pushes outward, creating a bulge, but nothing tears or leaks out.
This type of injury can happen during rear-end car collisions, when the sudden impact compresses the spine, or from repetitive heavy lifting at work that gradually weakens the disc over time.
A bulging disc can create pain, numbness, and tingling if it presses on a nearby nerve, but it’s considered the least serious of the three injuries because the disc itself remains relatively intact. MRI is critical because it can “prove” whether the bulge is rubbing on a nerve or the spinal cord.
Herniated Disc: A Rupture with Consequences
A herniated disc, sometimes referred to as a ruptured or slipped disc, occurs when the tough outer layer of the disc tears, allowing the soft inner gel to protrude through the opening. Imagine biting through that jelly donut so that some of the jelly squirts out through the crack in the dough, but the rest of the donut stays together.
Herniated discs usually result from a high-impact trauma. Maybe a construction worker falls from the scaffolding and lands on his back, or a passenger suffers the injury when the car is T-boned at an intersection.
When the inner gel leaks out, it often presses on spinal nerves, causing intense pain, weakness, numbness, and sometimes even a loss of bowel and bladder control. This is a more serious injury because the structure of the disc itself has broken down.
Extruded Disc: The Most Severe Injury
An extruded disc is the most serious of these three spinal injuries. It occurs when the inner gel pushes out through a tear in the outer layer, and a piece of that gel material breaks away and separates from the main disc entirely. In some cases, this fragment may migrate away from the disc space and press on other nerves somewhere else in the spinal canal.
You can imagine the donut being crushed so violently that the jelly not only squirts out the side, but a piece of that jelly breaks free and falls onto the plate, completely separate from the donut itself.
Extruded discs usually result from severe traumatic events like major car accidents at high speeds, devastating slips and falls from tall heights, and serious workplace accidents with heavy machinery. However, a disc can also be weakened from repetitive damage, and one more sports injury or unusual twisting movement can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, so to speak.
The damage is substantial, and the resulting injury often requires surgical treatment.
Why Is An MRI the Gold Standard for Disc Injuries?
After a back injury, all you know is that you’re in pain. Proper diagnosis of the cause of the pain is crucial to a personal injury claim.
X-rays and CT scans are both imaging tests that can show bones. If you have a broken vertebra or arthritis, these tests will reveal that. Discs, however, are made of soft tissue, not bone. That means X-rays and CT scans usually can’t detect anything wrong with the discs.
MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) is the gold standard for diagnosing disc injuries because it’s specifically designed to visualize soft tissues. It allows doctors to see exactly what’s happening, whether the disc is simply bulging or if the outer layer has been torn and the gel material is leaking through (herniated disc). It can even show if a fragment of the gel has separated from the main disc structure, as it will usually show up as a distinct piece of material away from the spinal area (extruded disc).
Unfortunately, some doctors—particularly in emergency room settings or at walk-in clinics—may skip the MRI and rely only on X-rays and CT scans, because MRIs are far more expensive tests. Sometimes, ER doctors are more focused on ruling out fractures than on investigating any soft-tissue damage. However, depending on the severity, an MRI may be ordered; however, various health insurance rules and considerations come into play.
Though healthcare providers typically mean well, this approach can be damaging to your personal injury claim, as without MRI evidence, insurance companies are likely to argue that your injury isn’t as serious as you claim it is. This is why an MRI can be crucial in diagnosing disc injuries and abnormalities.
MRIs can solidify that a client has significant spinal injuries with permanent consequences, because spinal discs cannot “heal” themselves. The desk may eventually dessicate (dry) and lose thickness, but discs cannot repair their exterior coatings.
When a case involves a proven disc injury, it typically has evidence of permanent injury and a higher value.
How A Personal Injury Lawyer Can Help
At Shapiro, Washburn & Sharp, we know which tests you need, what specialists you should see, and how to document every aspect of your injury to raise your odds of receiving the compensation you deserve. We also understand how insurance companies operate and how they may attempt to minimize your injury and pay less.
If you or a loved one has suffered a spinal injury, contact us right away. We’ll work to secure the objective medical evidence you need to secure fair compensation, as we did for a railroad worker who injured his lower back while lifting equipment. He was later diagnosed with a herniated lumbar disc and had to go through two surgeries and extensive physical therapy. We helped negotiate a $309,000 settlement on his behalf.
You can find our offices in Virginia Beach, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Hampton, Norfolk, and Chesapeake.