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| Image by jurvetson via Flickr |
Call us at 281-633-8600. In this article, Dr. J. Michael Bennett discusses Golfers Elbow and Tennis Elbow and treatments. He is a Board Certified Orthopedic Surgeon and a Fellowship Trained Sports Medicine Physician serving the Houston area from offices in Sugar Land and Houston, TX.
The following is the transcript of an interview with Dr. J. Michael Bennett:
Lots of people have tendinitis or tendonitis of the elbow — it’s an inflammation of the tendons around the elbow. It’s not an acute injury like a tendon tear or a rupture, it’s more like a chronic injury like a lesion on the tendon. You can have tendinitis on the inside of the elbow, which is medial epicondylitis or golfers elbow, or you can have tendinitis on the outside of the elbow, which is lateral epicondylitis, which is called tennis elbow. The reason these tendinitis injuries are called either golfers’ elbow or tennis elbow is because they were first described as affecting golfers or tennis players.
The majority of tendinitis is just tendon inflammation or degeneration from chronic activities such as golf or tennis or throwing or lifting. Most tendinitis symptoms can be addressed with non-operative measures such as a physical therapy program, as well as bracing and anti-inflammatory medications or injections. The injection therapy might be a steroid injection of the soft tissue surrounding the medial epicondyle (inside) or lateral epicondyle (outside) of the elbow. Usually these non-surgical therapies takes care of 95% of the tendinitis that I see.
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| Image by Marc Di Luzio via Flickr |
For the other 5% of patients who don’t get better with the non-surgical regimen, we get an MRI, which is a magnetic resonance image of the elbow, to look at the tendons on the inside and the outside to see what the tendon quality looks like. If it’s healthy and intact, then we can continue with conservative, non-operative measures. If it’s completely torn or very unhealthy then sometimes those patients will benefit from arthroscopic evaluation and debridement of that tendon, particularly on the lateral side, or outside of the tendon. Another option might be to use a small incision to go in and repair damaged tendon with a healthy tendon and that will usually take care of the problem.
If you’re experiencing elbow pain, call Dr. Bennett’s office at 281-633-8600 to schedule an evaluation. Early intervention makes it more likely that we can use non-surgical therapies to fix the problem.
