Growing up speaking French as a 1st language I enjoy lording it over people with little French inspired vocabulary from time to time. However the term"contrecoup" is not just a futile exercise of language, but something very relevant at this season.

The original term "contrecoup injury" is meant to describe a type of concussion whereby the brain is injured on the opposite side of the impact, and the result of the soft brain hitting the hard skull bone during an acceleration deceleration impact. However I have been using the term " contrecoup" a little more broadly to define a scenario whereby the injury can be on the opposite end of the point of impact.

The most common scenario I run into is when a patient falls on their buttocks, and finds themselves with a cervical injury. This happens quite a bit when we slip on the ice at this season. The patient is originally very concerned about bruising and soreness at the point of impact, but are really baffled when they wake up a few days later with massive cervical pain and headaches although they did not hit their head or neck on the ice. The force transmitted from the pelvis to the neck and head during the deceleration phase of your hind end hitting the ground is in the 3 digit, and it's virtually a mini whiplash. The moral of the story is that because you did not hit your head doesn't mean you did not injure your neck.