Whiplash

The term “Whiplash” originated in 1928 to describe the result of a sudden hyperextension injury of the neck immediately followed by hyperflexion injury and the resulting damage to the surrounding muscles, ligaments and tendons. Today we remove the “hyper” part referring to extension and flexion beyond the normal physical limits and define whiplash as an extremely rapid extension and flexion that causes injury as it is the suddenness of movement and not necessarily movement beyond what we can normally manage that causes the damage.