What is the best treatment for tennis elbow?

What is lateral epicondylitis, and what causes it?

Tennis is growing in popularity every day, with millions of people around the world enjoying the game. A widely known injury associated with racquet sports is tennis elbow, also called lateral epicondylitis. It's a painful condition caused by repetitive overuse of the tendons that attach the forearm muscles to the elbow. Between 1% and 3% of Americans develop it, and recovery can take up to 18 months. The good news: approximately 95% of people with tennis elbow get better with non-surgical treatment.

If you're dealing with tennis elbow, this post will help you understand the condition, its symptoms and causes, how it's diagnosed, and the treatment options available.

What is tennis elbow?

Tennis elbow is a painful inflammation of the tendons on the outside of the elbow, caused by repetitive stress (overuse). It's most often seen in athletes who regularly play racquet sports and in people who use their forearm muscles for repetitive gripping. Although it can affect almost anyone, it's more common in people with arthritis or other risk factors.

Symptoms vary from person to person and may include pain, tenderness, swelling, and redness over the outside of the elbow. Many people feel pain with certain forearm movements, such as lifting the forearm toward the body or pointing it out to the side.

Lateral epicondylitis is often misdiagnosed because it resembles other conditions, such as bursitis and tendinitis, that also cause pain and swelling on the outside of the arm. What sets it apart is inflammation of the forearm muscle tendons where they connect to the epicondyle of the humerus (the bony bump on the outside of the elbow). Activities that involve repetitive gripping, especially with the thumb and first two fingers, increase your chances of developing tennis elbow.

Tennis elbow symptoms

• Pain on the outside of the elbow when you fully extend your arm or fully bend your forearm
• Pain that is most severe when you straighten your arm completely or extend it fully from the shoulder, sometimes radiating down the back of the forearm
• Pain that can last for months, and sometimes years

Diagnosing tennis elbow

• Your doctor will perform a physical exam of the elbow and forearm, along with range-of-motion and strength tests.
• Imaging such as musculoskeletal ultrasound, X-ray, or MRI, or electromyography (EMG) testing, may be used to identify damage in the area.
• Our doctors will discuss your symptoms and your regenerative treatment options, such as PRP or stem cells.

Treatment options for lateral epicondylitis

Non-surgical treatments include rest, physical therapy, acupuncture or acupressure, anti-inflammatory medications, and a wrist and forearm splint or brace. Early on, the best treatment can be physical therapy, splinting the arm during activity, and platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections. Following your treatment plan helps relieve pain and prevent symptoms from coming back.

Two of the most frequently performed and well-tested treatments are PRP and bone marrow stem cell injections. The physician draws blood from a vein in your arm and/or bone marrow from your hip, spins it down to concentrate the healing components, and injects it into the painful tendons. Steroid injections have proven far less effective than PRP. Many patients are advised to see a surgeon, but surgery generally has poor outcomes for this condition.

Outcomes with PRP or bone marrow stem cells are very favorable. By contrast, using steroids to reduce inflammation risks damaging the tissue further, because steroids degrade tendons and can lead to tearing or chronic deterioration.

Get back to the game you love

At Spectrum Stem Cell & Regenerative Medicine Center in Wauwatosa, our physicians, Dr. Roman Berezovski and Dr. Alan Locke, have helped many patients from across the Milwaukee area overcome tennis elbow, get back to life, and return to the sports they love.

Call a Care Coordinator at (262) 202-8312 to get your questions answered and start treatment.

Written by our physicians

Every procedure at Spectrum is performed by a physician — Dr. Roman Berezovski and Dr. Alan Locke work side by side, using live ultrasound or X-ray guidance to place treatment exactly where you hurt.

Dr. Roman Berezovski, MD Medical Director

Dr. Alan Locke, DO Clinic Director