ROLE OF LOCAL CORTICOSTEROID INJECTION VS THERAPEUTIC ULTRASOUND REGARDING IMPROVEMENT IN PAIN FREE GRIP STRENGTH OF TENNIS ELBOW PATIENTS

Background: Tennis elbow or Lateral epicondylitis is now a days a well known condition with mixed etiopathogenesis of inammation and microtear resulting in decreased hand grip strength. Among the various treatment options, therapeutic ultrasound and local steroid injection are commonly used in managing these patients, but comparative effectiveness of these two treatment procedures are often debated. To compare the efcacy of local cortic Aim of Study: osteroid injection versus therapeutic ultrasound in terms of improvement in painfree grip strength(PFGS) of affected upper limb. This i Method: nterventional study was conducted on 56 patients of both sexes within the age group of 18-60 years with unilateral Tennis elbow. They were randomly divided in two groups of same number(28 in each group)- Group-1: managed with local injection of steroid (methylprednisolone-10mg, single dose) with 2% of 0.5 ml lignocaine and Group-2 : managed with Therapeutic Ultrasound. Improvement of PFGS was assessed by hand held Dynamometer. Data collected at 0 week (Visit-1 or Pre-initiation), 3weeks (Visit-2 ), 6 weeks (Visit-3), 12 weeks (Visit-4). For PFGS score, in both Group-1 and Group-2, there Result: was signicant increase in subsequent visits (p<0.05). The mean PFGS score of Group-1 was signicantly higher than that of Group-2 in visit2(p<0.01), but in visit-3(p>0.05) & visit-4(p>0.05) there was no statistically signicant difference noted. Local Steroid injection & Conclusion: therapeutic ultrasound both are effective in improving PFGS. Though Local steroid injection is more effective in initial period, but in subsequent followups, the difference was statistically insignicant.