What is best practice for treatment of tennis elbow is a knotty issue. Studies continue to try to unravel this. A recent piece of research published showed little long term benefits of physio but it was stated that they:
"... believe strongly in physical therapy for tennis elbow, both to help the patient through the acute phase of the injury and to provide the patient with exercises/knowledge to prevent reinjury down the line". "In many cases, patients will benefit considerably just from knowledge gained in physical therapy. If they apply this knowledge consistently, they may achieve better long-term outcomes,"
Below is an abstract of this work:
A steroid injection and 2 months of physical therapy may not be the solution for lateral epicondylalgia, commonly known as tennis elbow, suggest research findings published in the February 5 issue of JAMA.
Brooke K. Coombes, PhD, from the University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Australia, and colleagues found that patients treated with a single corticosteroid injection had a 14% greater chance of poor outcome and a 77% increased risk for reinjury at 1 year relative to placebo.
Eight weeks of physical therapy appeared to have no long-term benefit with the exception of decreased analgesic use. However, the physical therapy did improve short-term pain and disability outcomes at 1 month, although those benefits were lost when steroid injection was added to the treatment.
JAMA. 2013;309:461-469.
Thanks for sharing the blog. Of course best practice for treatment of tennis elbow is a knotty issue. But it is also true that a steroid injection and 2 months of physical therapy may not be the solution for lateral epicondylalgia- tennis elbow.
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