Tennis elbow (lateral epicondylitis) is characterised by pain and tenderness over the lateral epicondyle of the humerus. In the UK, the annual incidence of lateral elbow pain in general practice is around 4/1000 to 7/1000 people.(Hamilton 1986) It is most common in people aged between 40 and 50 years (Allander 1974); for example, the incidence is as much as 10% in women aged 42 to 46 years.(Cha...

Question: What is the effect of physiotherapy compared with a wait and see approach or corticosteroid injections for tennis elbow? Design: Randomised controlled trial with concealed allocation, assessor blinding, and intention-totreat analysis. Setting: Community setting in Australia. Participants: 198 respondents to advertisements of the trial, aged 18 to 65 years, with a clinical diagnosis of...

BACKGROUND There is conflicting evidence regarding extracorporeal shock wave treatment for chronic tennis elbow. HYPOTHESIS Treatment with repetitive low-energy extracorporeal shock wave treatment is superior to repetitive placebo extra-corporeal shock wave treatment. METHODS Seventy-eight patients enrolled in a placebo-controlled trial. All patients were tennis players with recalcitrant MR...

A systematic review of the literature on the effectiveness of physical interventions for lateral epicondylalgia (tennis elbow) was carried out. Seventy six randomised controlled trials were identified, 28 of which satisfied the minimum criteria for meta-analysis. The evidence suggests that extracorporeal shock wave therapy is not beneficial in the treatment of tennis elbow. There is a lack of e...