You Don’t Have to Play Tennis to Get Tennis Elbow

Certain injuries are named for specific activities, such as runner’s knee and pitcher’s shoulder. Included in this is tennis elbow, and like those other afflictions, it could have nothing to do with the activity it’s named after.

While tennis elbow affects half of tennis players at some point, tennis players only make up 10% of the total patient population, which means there are plenty of non-players who can lay claim to tennis elbow. 

No matter the source of your tennis elbow, the board-certified team at New Braunfels Orthopaedic Surgery & Sports Medicine is here to answer the call. We specialize in all of the major joints, and we routinely help patients with elbow pain.

Tennis elbow — an overuse injury

Also called lateral epicondylitis, tennis elbow is a painful condition that develops because of repeated stresses on the muscles and tendons in your forearm.

Your elbow creates a base for the muscles in your forearm — the muscles attach to bones in your elbow joint via tendons. These bones, called epicondyles, are located along the sides of your elbow and at the bottom of your humerus.

With tennis elbow, you overstress and damage a forearm muscle called the extensor carpi radialis brevis (ECRB). As a result, you place more stress on the ECRB tendon that attaches the muscle to the outside of your elbow at your lateral epicondyle. 

Signs of tennis elbow

The key symptom that grabs your attention is pain. Any time you see the suffix “-itis,” it means there’s inflammation. In the case of lateral epicondylitis, this inflammation is on the outside of your elbow, which is where the pain develops.

Tennis elbow pain can flare with certain movements and it can also travel down your arm toward your wrist. Outside of pain, there aren't usually other signs except for some potential weakness in your elbow, forearm, or grip.

Who gets tennis elbow

We’ve already established that tennis players are more susceptible to tennis elbow. That’s because they grip a racket and rely on forearm muscles for most every stroke.

But who makes up the other 90% of people who get tennis elbow? Well, that list is a long one and includes anyone who places repeated stress on their forearms and wrists, such as:

• Painters
• Butchers
• Plumbers
• Carpenters
• Weightlifters
• Gardeners

This overuse injury also tends to develop most often in people between the ages of 30 and 50.

Finding relief from tennis elbow

Tennis elbow develops over time, so it may take a while to repair the damaged muscles and tendons.

We can speed up your timeline with some targeted treatments and strategies that include:

• Resting your elbow
• Physical therapy exercises
• Over-the-counter medications
• Platelet-rich plasma therapy (PRP) to boost healing
• Bracing

More often than not, we recommend a combination of treatments — for example, we’ve had great success treating tennis elbow with bracing and occasional PRP treatments. This combination approach gives your elbow a little support as it heals while boosting the available regenerative resources within for rebuilding and repair.

The good news is that no matter how we treat your tennis elbow, most people heal from this injury without surgery.

If you think that you might have developed tennis elbow, whether you were on the courts or not, you’ve come to the right place for care. Contact our office in New Braunfels, Texas, for expert diagnosis and treatment of elbow pain. You can call 830-341-1386 or request an appointment online.