Shots don't help tennis elbow long term

BRISBANE, Australia, Sept. 29 (UPI) -- Corticosteroid injections perform poorly for treating tennis elbow long term, according to researchers in Australia.

University of Queensland researchers tested different treatments on three separate groups of patients with tennis elbow. One group was allocated the "wait and see" approach -- they were told the condition would eventually settle down and were given specific instructions on how to avoid aggravating the pain.

A second group was given a corticosteroid injection and advised to gradually return to normal activities, and the final group received eight 30-minute treatments of physiotherapy over six weeks and was taught home exercises and self-manipulation.

Initially, corticosteroid injections were the most successful with 78 percent reporting improvement, while 65 percent said the physiotherapy helped and 27 were better in the wait-and-see group.

However, after a year 72 percent of the corticosteroid injection participants said their condition deteriorated after three or six weeks, while participants in both the physiotherapy and wait-and-see group had either much improved or completely recovered, according to the study published in the British Medical Journal.