This time of year the thoughts of many people naturally turn to that painful and common condition know to the inner circle of the Medical World as cubitum wembeldonousii, or Tennis Elbow. As you are unlikely to be blessed with such a special Physician, your doctor may have called it by the term lateral epicondylitis. This is a descriptive term for pain around the outside of the elbow, the result of ageing, repetitive use and possibly trauma. It affects as many as three percent of the population and only about five percent of patients appearing for treatment are actually tennis players. This brings to mind many frivolous remarks about athlete’s foot!! The term “tennis elbow” was coined because as many a fifty percent of serious tennis players do actually develop the condition.

When the same condition manifests itself on the inside of the elbow, medial epicondylitis, it is called golfer’s elbow. Both are the results of the same conditions, yield to the same treatments and cause the same degree of discomfort. In more rare cases the pain is felt in the back of the elbow. All in all these are examples of repetitive strain produced osteoarthritis, and with careful management can be treated very successfully.

In the worse case, the patient develops gouty arthritis in the elbow. This means that the strain or trauma produced problem is aggravated by the presence of an over abundance of uric acid in the system and develops into an inflamed and violently painful joint. If you have ever experienced or witnessed classic gout, or arthritic inflammation of the big toe joint you know how excruciating this type of pain can be. When it afflicts the elbow, which is used more often and in a wider range than the toe joint, one can imagine the extreme agony it produces. I have regularly treated members of the British Rifle Team who develop this unusual form of tennis elbow as a result of the trauma and strain which results from the long periods of practice required to become marksmen and women.