What is tennis elbow?

Can you explain to us what tennis elbow is? Yeah so tennis elbow is a strange condition as the name implies it's thought to be related to tennis but actually in actual fact very few tennis players get tennis elbow mainly because they have very careful training and very careful monitoring of their grip and the various tennis rackets they will use. So tennis elbow or lateral epicondylitis to give it its more technical term is a condition that affects the common extensor muscles where they insert on the outside of the elbow. In the wrist the movements are very easy to localize so anything that lifts the wrist up or extends the wrist most all the virtually all those muscles come from the outside of the elbow which is where the common extensor muscles are. And the one that allow us to flex our wrist come from the inside, the so-called medial epicondyle or medial epicondyle area. So with tennis elbow, I think the way to think of it is that most of our activities that we do, we tend to put our wrist into an extended position. We don't keep it in the neutral position and certainly not in the flex position, because that is what gives us strength and grip strength and most activities we do using use of computers, computer mouse, gripping activities and physical activities, we tend to extend our wrist and that involves, and you can feel for yourself, involves the contraction of the muscles that insert onto the lateral epicondyle. In tennis elbow, we develop areas of damage to the common extensor tendon, which can be small tears within the substance of the tendon or can progress to a frank tear. And there are varying degrees of inflammation in the tendon as well, as shown normally on an ultrasound scan or an MRI scan. And that's what's thought to give rise to the pain. The tendon tissue, like most other collagen type tissues, is very poorly vascularized and this thought that once the injury happens, the poor vasculature means that it has a very poor ability to heal itself and often we're left in a suspended state of pain and a very poor inflammatory response and then this condition can become chronic.