Clinical profile of patients with lateral epicondylitis admitted at a tertiary care hospital

Abstract

The incidence of tennis elbow is 1 to 3% in the general population per annum. Tennis elbow typically affects the individuals ranging from ages of 35 to 50 years with a median of 41 years and it affects equally both males and females. The dominant arm is affected in more than half of the patients Populations at high risk are workers whose occupations require frequent rotary motion of the forearm like carpenter, gardener, computer workers, knitting workers, weight lifting workers and construction workers. All patients seen and clinically diagnosed as lateral epicondylitis and satisfying the inclusion criteria are selected. After obtaining written consent by simple random sampling alternatively patient received steroid injections and platelet rich plasma injections under strict aseptic precautions and were divided into group A group B respectively. In this study PRP and Corticosteroid treated groups had pre injection VAS of 66.5 and 67.5 respectively which was not statistically significant (p=0.4). Post injection at 1 month follow up VAS showed a significant decrease in Corticosteroid group (1.92) as compared to PRP group (45.3). At the end of 3 months, the VAS remained same in Corticosteroid group (45.5) and further decreased in PRP group (38.9).