VIP Medical Group Discusses the Best Elbow Pain Treatment in 2020
Elbow pain can appear in many forms. You may experience elbow pain in the form of inflammation and pain due to an inflamed tendon. You may experience elbow injury due to a fracture or dislocation. And you may also experience elbow pain in the form of numbness, burning sensations, tingling sensations, an inability to move your arms, swellings, or an inability to straighten your elbows.
You may suffer from elbow pain for a variety of reasons. You may suffer from elbow injury such as dislocated elbow, fractured elbow, strains or sprains. Elbow osteoarthritis can reduce your mobility and cause elbow pain whenever you move your joints. You may also suffer from tennis elbow or tendonitis — people with tennis elbow experience sharp pains in their biceps or triceps due to overuse of the elbows.
If you want to treat tennis elbow or elbow injury, you must consult the best interventional pain specialist or pain doctor in your area. An interventional pain specialist is someone who has been trained to diagnose the root cause of joint pains and treat it using the latest minimally invasive procedures. They treat elbow pain with minimal risk of side effects and they offer lasting relief.
You must avoid surgical treatments and opioids at all costs. Surgical treatments for elbow pain are unnecessary and risky. And opioids only offer temporary relief without addressing the root cause of elbow pain — they can also be highly addictive.
In this article, we discuss the best elbow pain treatment in 2020.
Conservative Treatments for Elbow Injury
When you visit an interventional pain specialist, they will start your treatment with a preliminary diagnosis and recommendation of conservative treatments. The pain doctor will run a series of tests, including physical examination, visual inspection, screening tests like MRIs and X-Rays, and blood tests. Based on the results of their tests, they’ll curate a minimally invasive treatment plan to treat tennis elbow or elbow injury. However, all minimally invasive treatments are also accompanied by conservative treatments such as the following.
RICE
RICE stands for Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation. The first thing any pain doctor will tell you is that you should rest your injured elbows, apply an ice pack, wrap the injured elbow in an ACE bandage, and elevate the elbow. This will help reduce inflammation and pain.
Physical Therapy
The elbow pain doctor will also recommend a physical therapist or some physical therapy exercises. You must follow the exercises regularly to help restore mobility in your elbows.
Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs
Non-Steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like Aspirin and Ibuprofen help reduce inflammation and pain. These medications should only be used in measured doses to avoid side effects. Furthermore, these medications offer temporary relief from pain, so you can’t use them as the primary treatment.
Tennis Elbow Braces
People with tennis elbow caused by racquet sports or overuse of elbows should also wear tennis elbow braces. The best tennis elbow braces are made of materials like nylon and neoprene. They exert pressure on your forearm muscle in order to minimize inflammation and pain caused by tennis elbow. You simply have to wrap the tennis elbow braces around the forearm muscle because it will limit your movement.
Minimally Invasive Treatments for Elbow Injury
The aforementioned conservative treatments for tennis elbow and elbow injury will only help restore mobility or offer temporary comfort. They don’t treat the underlying root cause of elbow injury. That’s where minimally invasive treatments come in. Based on your diagnosis, the elbow pain doctor will curate a minimally invasive treatment plan.
Steroid Injections
Steroid Injections, also known as Corticosteroids, are generally the first line of treatments for elbow pain. This is essentially a concentrated form of anti-inflammatory drugs injected into the affected elbow tissues to reduce inflammation and pain. During the procedure, the pain doctor will draw up the steroids into a syringe along with some local anesthetic and deliver it into the elbow tissues. This method will instantly reduce inflammation and pain.
Viscosupplementation
Viscosupplementation, also known as Hyaluronic Acid Injection, is the second line of treatment should the corticosteroids fail. The elbow joint fluid consists of a viscous fluid called hyaluronic acid that enables the cartilage-covered surfaces of the bone to glide against each other. However, people suffering from elbow osteoarthritis often have insufficient hyaluronic acid, which leads to friction during joint movements, which leads to inflammation and pain. During this procedure, the pain doctor injects hyaluronic acid into the elbow joint to enhance lubrication and shock absorption.
Platelet-Rich Plasma Injection
Platelet-Rich Plasma Injection is often recommended as a suitable treatment of tennis elbow or severe elbow osteoarthritis. This is a procedure in which the platelet-rich plasma comes from the patient’s body, so it doesn’t cause any infections. This procedure can also lead to cell regeneration. However, it’s a relatively new procedure, so it’s still quite unreliable, extremely costly, and it isn’t covered by insurance. As such, we don’t recommend this treatment.
Schedule your Elbow Injury Treatment Today
Pain Treatment Specialists is one of the best pain management centers in the United States. Whether you’re suffering from an elbow injury, tennis elbow, osteoarthritis, or any other issues, please reach out to us. When you visit our pain management clinic, one of our board-certified pain doctors will examine your symptoms, run some diagnostic tests, and curate a treatment plan ideally suited for your specific needs. For more information, please schedule your elbow injury treatment today.