The main symptom of tennis elbow is elbow pain and restricted movement, which is one of the diseases frequently encountered in acupuncture clinics.
Many people who suffer from tennis elbow have not played tennis, but through clinical observation, most of them are related to soft tissue strain and soft tissue aging degeneration in the elbow. According to the statistics of the clinical cases treated by the acupuncture department of our hospital in recent years, the majority of patients are middle-aged and above. Wu Jun, Department of Acupuncture and Moxibustion, Nantong City Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine
If the elbow pain is caused by occasional sprain or cold in young people, there is no local strain injury and soft tissue aging degeneration pathology, after a period of rest, or through acupuncture, massage, physical therapy, external use of Shujin Tongluo ointment, taking blood circulation and stasis Chinese medicine, generally can achieve better results.
However, once there is a strain and degeneration of the elbow soft tissues caused by tennis elbow, most of the elbow pain lasts for a long time and conventional treatment is difficult to work. In some cases, the elbow pain can be temporarily relieved after resting, and then the symptoms will appear again after a little cold or careless exertion. Many patients have experienced local closure, acupuncture, massage, and physical therapy, but the pain returns soon afterwards. There are even patients with persistent tennis elbow who have undergone Western surgical treatment, but their symptoms are still not relieved. Foreign scholars Nirschl et al. in 1980 had proposed the diagnostic criteria for intractable tennis elbow. (1) severe pain in the lateral epicondyle of the humerus lasting for more than six months; (2) severe local pressure pain in the lateral epicondyle of the humerus; (3) no significant symptom relief with 14 days of brake rest; (4) no significant symptom relief with local closure of the lateral epicondyle twice during the braking period. Therefore, tennis elbow not only brings inconvenience to the patient’s work and life, but also causes great pressure to the patient’s psychology.
Why is tennis elbow so stubborn and the common treatment methods are not effective? It turns out that most patients with tennis elbow have a strain or degenerative aging pathology of the soft tissues of the elbow. Pathological tissues such as adhesions, scarring, and calcification appear in the soft tissues, and these pathological tissues form a snag on the nerves of the elbow, resulting in intractable pain and dysfunction in the elbow. Elbow pain in a significant number of patients is also closely related to cervical spondylosis. Although the elbow is not large, soft tissue strain and degenerative aging can occur in different anatomical areas. According to national and international studies in the last decade, there are four major pathological changes in the elbow alone. In cases with cervical spondylosis, the pathological changes are more extensive, making the diagnosis and treatment difficult for clinicians.
At present, most of the conventional clinical treatment methods are symptomatic treatment for the local pain points of tennis elbow, but cannot address the real cause of tennis elbow and solve the pathology of strain and aging tissue on nerve compression in the neck, shoulder, arm and elbow area, so it is not surprising that tennis elbow has become a difficult clinical disease.
In recent years, the acupuncture department of our hospital has been carrying out clinical treatment research on tennis elbow, with the accumulation of clinical experience of many successful and unsuccessful cases over the years, the research on the pathology of the disease has been deepened; especially the introduction of new techniques of minimally invasive treatment of Chinese medicine, such as acupuncture knife, sharp-edged acupuncture, paddle acupuncture, etc., whether for the complex local pathological changes of tennis elbow, or for patients with comprehensive pathology of neck, shoulder, arm and elbow, our department has formed a unique treatment mode and advantages. The treatment mode and advantages of our department have been improved continuously. This year, our department applied the paddle needle technique to many cases of persistent tennis elbow and achieved ideal near and long-term results through one-time treatment. Therefore, like many neck, shoulder, back and leg pain diseases, tennis elbow is also becoming a new advantageous disease in the acupuncture department of our hospital. The application of the new technique of Chinese medicine needle treatment for tennis elbow has the advantages of no skin incision, no surgical scars, ideal near and long-term curative effect, low treatment cost, safe and painless, etc., which will be welcomed by more and more patients.