Seven things you can do right now to help eliminate elbow pain from tennis elbow (aka lateral epicondylitis). Stretches and exercises demonstrated by a physical therapist to help you decrease elbow pain and return to doing the things you love.

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WHAT IS LATERAL EPICONDYLITIS OR TENNIS ELBOW?
Lateral elbow pain (lateral epicondylitis or “tennis elbow”) is a common overuse injury that occurs in the arm. Ironically, I don’t see many people who actually developed the problem playing tennis! Typically any hobby or profession where lots of hand and arm use takes place (weightlifting, plumbers, carpenters, mechanics, etc) is the culprit.

All the muscles that extend your wrist and forearm actually originate on the outside part of your elbow. With overtraining or overuse these muscles can become fatigued and actually damage the tendon that attaches them to the outside of your elbow.

This “over-pulling” from these muscles can cause inflammation and even damage to the tendon that ties these muscles into the outside of your arm.

MODALITIES TO TREAT TENNIS ELBOW PAIN (3:00)
The first thing you should do when treating this problem is try to get inflammation under control. Anti-inflammatory measures include resting your elbow (NOT doing activities that aggravate it), ice (15 minutes, 2-3 times daily), compression, and anti-inflammatory medication.

These should be performed daily until pain subsides.

STRETCHES FOR TENNIS ELBOW
Stretching is another crucial component to help alleviate tension and pain in your elbow and forearm. Stretching should be performed daily in a range that causes a stretching sensation but not pain. The best stretches for lateral elbow pain include:

1. Wrist Extensor Stretch (5:00): Great at alleviating tension in the wrist extensors.

2. Wrist Flexor Stretch (5:41): Oftentimes when your wrist and finger flexors are too tight (common from gripping), they can pull on your wrist extensors and cause this lateral elbow pain. It’s important to stretch them out as well.

3. Lateral Epicondylitis Stretch (6:03): My personal favorite stretch for this condition as it adds forearm pronation to wrist flexion to enhance the stretch even further.

STRENGTHENING EXERCISES FOR TENNIS ELBOW

4. Active Range Of Motion (6:50): Gently move your wrist up and down against gravity resistance in a pain-free range. If this does elicit pain in your elbow you may need to just perform the modalities and stretches for another week or two.

5. Wrist Extensor Eccentrics (7:59): Eccentrics have been proven to be the best way to promote healing in a tendon. This can be performed with a dumbbell or resistance bands/loops.

6. Resisted Wrist Extension (9:48): The final step is to take your wrist joints and forearm musculature through full resisted extension – both pulling up and lowering down.

ONE MORE THOUGHT (10:32)

Typically elbow pain is a manifestation of some deficiency (lack of mobility or lack of strength) in your wrist or shoulder joint. In order to maximally treat your elbow with the best outcomes possible you should also address any deficiency in your shoulder and/or wrist as well.

There you have them! My best tips, advice, stretches and exercises to help alleviate your elbow pain and help you to feel better.

I hope you enjoyed this video and it helped alleviate some of your pain. If you did enjoy it please leave me a “THUMBS UP” like on the video above.

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Dr. Mark Stovak demonstrates how to conduct a musculoskeletal physical exam on the elbow.
http://www.viachristi.org/doctor/mark-l-stovak-md
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My name is Jennie McCarthy, I’m a physician assistant with CHI Health Orthopedics, specializing in shoulder and elbow surgery.

I’m going to talk a little bit about the four most common elbow conditions that we see in our clinic. Those would include tennis elbow, or lateral epicondylitis, olecranon bursitis, elbow arthritis and cubital tunnel syndrome.

Tennis Elbow
Tennis elbow is a condition affecting the outside of the elbow where the tendons that help control the wrist get inflamed and irritated. It can be caused by activities such as tennis or other racquetball type sports, but also is commonly caused from overuse.

Treatment options for tennis elbow are usually conservative. We start by using anti-inflammatories, rest, ice, modifying our activities, and usually physical therapy. If the conservative treatments do not help, then commonly the next step is an ultrasound-guided injection right around the tendons that are inflamed and irritated, and sometimes, in rare cases, we actually do surgery to clean out the inflamed tendons.

Olecranon Bursitis
Olecranon bursitis is where the bursa on the posterior or back of the elbow gets inflamed and sometimes can be infected. It will be red swollen warm and pretty painful.

Bursitis of the elbow is usually treated with conservative measures such as rest, ice, compression and modifying your activities but occasionally we have to put a needle in there to drain the fluid out. In some cases, where there would be infection in the bursa, we actually have to take you to surgery to wash out all of the infection.

Elbow Arthritis
Elbow arthritis is wear and tear of the elbow joint where the cartilage starts to wear away and then your bones can rub together.

Treatment options for elbow arthritis usually include conservative measures such as NSAIDs or anti-inflammatories, and steroid injections into the elbow joint. Sometimes, if your arthritis is bad enough, we do surgery to clean out any loose bodies, or sometimes even elbow replacement.

Cubital Tunnel Syndrome
Cubital tunnel syndrome is a disorder of the elbow that actually does not cause pain of the elbow but it’s where your ulnar nerve, which is a big nerve (one of the three biggest nerves in your arm) gets trapped or compressed at the elbow and causes numbness and tingling in your hand. It usually causes numbness in the small finger and half of the ring finger.

Treatment options for cubital tunnel are usually physical therapy to help desensitize or stretch out that nerve, and if that does not work, we usually talk about surgery to actually surgically decompress the nerve at the elbow that your symptoms go away.

If you have any symptoms of your elbow that are not going away with conservative measures at home then it’s usually a great time to come see an orthopedic specialist.

https://www.chihealth.com/ortho

Our videos are provided for educational purposes only. For specific questions regarding your treatment options, please consult with your provider or visit https://www.chihealth.com/en/find-a-provider.html to find a provider near you.

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