3 Great Steps Toward Alleviating Sciatica Pain
The pain you feel when you have sciatica can be a singular and all-encompassing pain, making finding relief your top priority. Here are three best practices to help you weather a sciatica episode.
Potential Causes of Elbow Pain and How We Can Help
The elbows often get lost between shoulder and wrist issues, but for those who are dealing with a painful elbow, they quickly realize just how important these major joints are.
If there’s something wrong in your elbow and you’re trying to narrow down the possibilities, you’re in the right place. The experienced and skilled team here at Western Orthopaedics specializes in elbow issues, and we want to share some basic information about common problems in these major joints.
Breaking down elbow pain
Given how much you use your elbows, it’s little wonder that these joints can develop painful issues, which we want to break into a few general categories, including tendon issues, arthritis, bursitis, and injuries.
Tendon issues in your elbow
One of the more common roads to elbow pain is problems with tendons, which are soft tissues that connect your muscles to your bones. Examples include:
- Biceps tendon damage
- Tennis elbow, or lateral epicondylitis
- Golfers elbow, pitcher’s elbow, or medial epicondylitis
While these conditions may favor sporty names, they’re generally overuse issues that involve tendonitis — inflammation in the connective tissue. In fact, about 90% of golfers elbow cases aren’t even related to the sport.
These tendon issues often lead to pain during certain movements, such as rotating or extending your elbow.
When arthritis strikes your elbows
Another common issue that leads to elbow pain is arthritis. About 1 in 4 American adults (54.4 million) have arthritis, and the types that tend to affect elbows include osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, post-traumatic arthritis, and lupus.
With elbow arthritis, you likely feel a dull, achy pain in the joint that can worsen with activity.
Bursitis in your elbows
Like other joints in your body, your elbow contains bursae, which are fluid-filled sacs that prevent friction within the joint. A common issue that can lead to elbow pain is elbow bursitis, which typically affects the olecranon bursa, which is located at the bony tip of your elbow.
When this sac is inflamed, it can be quite painful, especially if you lean on your elbow.
Injury to an elbow
At our practice, we often see injuries to the elbow, whether they’re soft or hard tissue injuries. You are likely aware of the acute injury, so you know what happened that led to elbow pain. The next step is to figure out whether you overstretched a connective tissue, dislocated the joint, or fractured one of the bones in your elbow.
Getting relief from your elbow pain
Given the list we just went through, you can see that there are many roads to elbow pain, which also means there are many treatment options. So, when you come see us for elbow pain, our first step is to diagnose the problem, which will guide us in your treatment.
Once we identify the culprit behind your elbow pain, we work quickly to relieve the pain and to restore long-term health to the joint. These treatments might include:
- Rest
- Bracing
- Activity modification
- Medications
- Corticosteroid injections
- Physical therapy
- Regenerative medicine
If the damage is great, we may recommend a surgical solution, such as repairing torn soft tissues or replacing the joint if wear and tear has taken a toll.
To get to the bottom of your elbow pain, we invite you to contact one of our offices in Arvada or Denver, Colorado, to schedule an appointment.
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