A retrospective study of the conservative treatment of tennis-elbow.

The files of 64 patients (70 tennis elbows) treated in our department because of tennis elbow complaints, were reviewed. The results showed injection with a corticosteroid preparation to be effective in alleviating the pain in the short term (91% improvement within 1 week), but the incidence of recurrence of symptoms to be high (51%) after an average period of 3 months). Physical therapy appeared to be less effective (47% improvement after an average of 6 weeks or 20 sessions), but recurrence of symptoms was far less frequent (5%).