You probably don’t think much about your elbow until you have elbow pain. But like other joints, this part of your body is a complex structure of bone, tendons, muscles, ligaments, cushioning sacs, as well as systems like the nervous system, immune system, and circulatory system. Any and all of these can come into play when you have elbow pain. Here’s what may be causing that elbow pain and how to get elbow pain relief.
What Causes Elbow Pain?
Many activities and events can cause elbow pain, and they typically fall into one of these three categories.
- One-time injuries – With a one-time injury, you may be able to pinpoint when and why your elbow started hurting after a sprain, dislocation, or fracture. That injury may have healed long ago, but pain and chronic inflammation remains.
- Repetition injuries – Wear and tear injuries happen when a joint is overused often in a repetitive way. This may lead to bursitis (elbow inflammation). Bursa are tiny fluid-filled sacs that cushion other elbow structures. Some other repetition injuries include tennis elbow, golfer’s elbow, pinched nerves, and stress fractures. This may occur when you accompany repetitive movement with extra weight or force placed on the joint, such as an arm fully extended with a tennis racket serving a ball.
- Disease-caused pain – Certain types of diseases and chronic illnesses can also cause pain, like untreated Lyme Disease, Arthritis, Autoimmune disorders (Lupus, Rheumatoid arthritis), Gout, bony growths, cartilage erosion
As you can see, elbow pain has many causes. And most of these causes are treatable. You don’t have to accept pain. It’s not “just part of aging.” And you rarely is giving up a sport or job you love is the only way to manage the pain.
How Is Elbow Pain Treated?
Depending on the cause of elbow pain, you’ll find many effective treatments, not all of which require you to take medication or surgery. When it comes to elbow pain, we typically try less invasive and drastic measures first to see if the pain resolves. These might include:
- Icing 20 minutes every 4 hours for 2 to 3 days until pain resolves
- An elbow strap, which supports the joint during the activity causing the inflammation. But a strap should typically not be worn all the time as your body may become dependent on it, worsening the issues.
- A home exercise program, with exercises specifically designed to relieve elbow pain by strengthening and supporting the surrounding tissues.
- Over-the-counter non-steroid anti-inflammatory (NSAID) medicine like ibuprophen, naproxen, or aspirin
- Physical therapy helps strengthen the surrounding muscles and tissues to better support the joint without further inflaming it.
- Injections of an anti-inflammatory, usually a steroid like cortisone, into the joint. These temporarily ease the pain and inflammation.
- Arthroscopic Elbow surgery, such as Arthroscopic Debridement, where we make tiny incisions with camera-guided instruments to remove bony growths from the elbow
- Total Elbow Arthroplasty or Replacement, reserved for severe elbow damage. This surgery replaces the damaged part of the elbow with a medical grade hinge.
Orthopedic Care for Elbow Pain in Pasadena, CA
Don’t ignore elbow pain. If inflammation and injury continue, you could cause even more damage. The earlier we identify what’s causing your pain, the more likely we are to manage that pain through conservative treatments.