Steroid Injections May Not Help Tennis Elbow

You don’t have to play tennis to get tennis elbow. Any repetitive action of the forearm – hammering, using a screwdriver, painting – can lead to the condition, called lateral epicondylitis. A common approach to treatment is the injection of corticosteroids, usually cortisone, around the affected joint. Australian researchers have compared three different treatment regimes in 200 patients: One group was given a corticosteroid injection at local tender points, the second group had 8 thirty-minute physical therapy treatments over 6 weeks together with home exercises, and the third group received ‘wait-and-see’ treatment. Patients were assessed again at 6 weeks and at one year.

After 6 weeks the steroid shots were most successful – 78% of those who got them reported improvements. Next was physical therapy, with a 65% success rate. Wait-and-see was successful in only 27% of the patients. However, after one year more of the steroid injection patients were significantly worse than those who got physical therapy, and 72% of them had deteriorated after the first 3 to 6 weeks. The one-year results for physical therapy and wait-and-see were the same, and better than those for injection therapy.

It would be interesting to know if these findings would be mirrored by results for other forms of tendinitis – e.g. rotator cuff tendonitis, or biceps tendonitis. It seems that steroid injections can provide immediate relief, but he long-term effects are not good.