Tennis Elbow Part 3 and Physiotherapy Kitchener Waterloo

November 4th, 2014 - Posted in Physiotherapy, Tennis Elbow

Tennis Elbow and Physiotherapy- Part 3

When Should You Use a Tennis Elbow Brace?

A tennis elbow brace can be very effective from the moment you put it on. In these instances, the brace will dissipate the stressful gripping forces away from your injured structures.

However, a tennis elbow brace does not work in 100% of cases. In our experience, we recommend that you seek physiotherapy assistance in these cases. In stubborn cases, you have a very high likelihood of referred symptoms from your C5/C6.

Only a thorough examination of your neck, shoulder, elbow and upper limb nerve structures will confirm your diagnosis and direct which treatment options will assist you the quickest.

What is Your Tennis Elbow Prognosis?

Untreated Tennis Elbows can last anywhere from 6 months to 2 years. You are also prone to recurrence.

Studies have shown physiotherapy to be the most effective way of managing Tennis Elbow when compared to steroid injections or giving of advice alone. In a recent study,

When given a 6 week course of physiotherapy comprising of 8 treatment sessions, most patients show significant improvement after 3 weeks, increasing to a 60% or greater recovery after 6 weeks of treatment. This improvement is shown to continue to around a 90% improvement at 12 months, even without further treatment.

By comparison, provision of advice only resulted in a recovery of 60% or greater being delayed a further 6 weeks, to three months. Over longer periods of time, patients given good advice did recover, and by 6 months had achieved similar gains to the treatment groups. This was maintained over time and continued to improve.

Cortisone injections resulted in very good initial improvements with almost 80% reduction in symptoms after 3 to 6 weeks. BUT (and it’s a big one) patients who received cortisone injections showed an increase in pain after 6 weeks, and by 3 months had fallen well below both the physio treatment groups AND the advice only groups in terms of their recovery. This deterioration was followed by delayed healing, resulting in the cortisone injected group having almost 30% more pain after 12 months than if they had followed advice alone.

For this reason, researchers do not recommend cortisone injections as a stand alone treatment for Tennis Elbow.

Further research is currently been undertaken to assess the effectiveness of cortisone injections combined with physiotherapy management to see if the initial early gains can be better maintained.

For more advice about tennis elbow, please ask your physiotherapist.

http://physioworks.com.au/injuries-conditions-1/tennis-elbow

Be Well.