Aging Patient Hand & Elbow Problems – Gary M. Millard, D.O.

Transcript:

In the middle-to-older population, it’s a lot of nerve type of problems, carpal tunnel, or older nerve problems where people are having numbness in their hands, starting to lose a lot of function, and also people do develop a lot of arthritis in their hands. A lot of people with “tennis elbow”, lateral epicondylitis, or “golfer’s elbow”, or medial epicondylitis. 

People that come in with lateral epicondylitis tend to have a lot of pain of the lateral, or outside, of the elbow. It tends to hurt them when they’re lifting things up, when they try to extend their wrist a lot. And it’s something that, if you don’t treat it correctly, people tend to keep re-aggravating the same injury. 

The treatment for lateral and medial epicondylitis generally starts off with therapy, a lot of stretching-type exercises. Most people do tend to improve with that. Some types involve doing steroid injections. A small percentage of people do end up requiring surgery for it.