ABSTRACT
Background: tennis elbow is a common orthopedic disease affecting elbow in middle aged people. Ninety percent of patients are cured using conservative treatments. In the past, emphasis was placed on the use of long arm splints for its treatment; however, recent studies put doubt on the use of this method of treatment for the complications arising from the application of splints. The results of using long arm splints for the treatment of tennis elbow were evaluated in our study
Methods: this was a case series non randomized clinical trial involving 25 patients treated with long arm castsplints, and 25 patients treated without the use of splint. Local corticosteroid injections and oral NSAIDs were administered for all patients. The two groups were compared in the third week, third month and sixth month of their treatment for the presence of local tenderness and pain in passive flexion test of wrist and fingers against resistance. Using SPSS 9.0, data were analyzed via repeated measurements test of ANOVA
Results: patients in case and control groups had mean ages 43.6 +/- 7.2 and 43.6 +/- 6 years, respectively. Prior to any treatments, all patients in this study suffered from pain and tenderness in the origin of forearm extensor muscles. Their pain exacerbated upon passive flexion of wrist and fingers against resistance. No significant difference was seen in third week, third month and sixth month [P value =0.32], and no significant difference was seen in the results of our tests regarding the presence of local tenderness and pain in passive flexion of wrist and fingers against resistance between the two groups
Conclusions: after a follow-up period of six months, this study demonstrated no statistically significant difference between the two groups treated with and without long arm splints