New Tennis Elbow Treatment

[Angel]

The newest way to relieve the pain of tennis elbow may not come from pills in a bottle. Now, doctors may be able to treat the condition using your own blood.

A small pilot study done by researchers at Stanford University Medical Center in Menlo Park, Calif., reveals a component of blood, when specially treated and re-injected into the affected elbow, can give more relief than more commonly-used therapies like cortisone shots.

"Cortisone injections do tend to work early on, but a fair number of patients will recur with their symptoms and cortisone itself is fairly toxic," study author Allan Mishra, M.D., told Ivahoe.

For this treatment, researchers tested the new treatment on patients with tennis elbow -- a condition not limited to tennis players. It is a degeneration of the tendon above the elbow. For patients who do not respond to treatments like anti-inflammatories and physical therapy, surgical repair of the tendon is sometimes necessary.

Researchers injected 15 patients with platelet-rich plasma. Platelets are red blood cells and contain powerful growth factors -- chemicals that help the body repair its own damage. Researchers used each patients' own blood and concentrated the blood cells until a half teaspoon of the material had 500 percent more platelets than normal blood.

"Your body has an excellent ability to heal itself," said Dr. Mishra. He also says the treatment needs more testing before it can be made available to the public.

[Frank]

Good comprehensive post on tennis elbow treatment