Epicondylitis started with a pop

I have been battling lateral epicondylitis for about 8 years. It started when I was saddling my horse. I felt a pop with plenty of pain; my arm still worked fine, but it hurt all the time. None of the standard treatments (rest, cortisone, physical therapy) help much except when I had my arm in a cast for 4 weeks about 4 years ago. It felt much better after that, but never got totally better and slowly got worse until 8 months ago when it got very bad again - this time following a slight wrist sprain. The two injuries seem to fight each other. Again, cortisone, stretching, strengthening do no good.

Will a partial tear in that lateral epicondyle heal with immobilization or is surgery the only thing that will help?

[usarmymedic1]

are you sure it is a partial tear in the origion tendon? do to your length of symptoms I would think you are in stage 3 of lateral epicondylitis which means that your pain could just be from a build up of scar tissue around the tendon. have you tried acylic acid with the iontophorisis it helps break up the under lying scar tissue?? I have used this on patients and it has help. but partial tears in tendons do need to be surgicaly repaired but how long has it been torn? there are questions that you need to have answered cause I have not seen to good of a outcome with the release for this.

[MisterTimC]

Thanks for your reply and thanks for serving our country and for the sacrifices you have made. I haven't had any imaging done on my elbow, so really only have a good guess on the partial tear. The original pop near my elbow was about 8 years ago. Then the pain was nasty for several weeks, and slowly improved but never got fully better. I have had ionto treatments but I don't know if they used acylic acid. At the time, the ionto treatments didn't help much. The pain has gone up and down without  ever really going away for the past 8 years. Where can I find a description of the stages of epicondylitis?

[usarmymedic1]

http://www.emedicine.com/orthoped/topic510.htm

[MisterTimC]

Thanks again!

[MisterTimC]

Good news! My elbow is feeling great! Rest does wonders. 6 weeks in a cast and my elbow hasn't felt this good in 8 years. My doctor said that it's hard to know for sure if I had a partial tear of the tendon without doing an MRI, but after too many injections of cortisone, I am sooooooo glad to be done with that constant aching pain.

Three Cheers!