Background Lateral elbow tendinopathy is one of the most common chronic and degenerative diseases which significantly affects quality of life and the activities of daily living of a person. The following is a systematic review reporting a comparison between physical therapy intervention and corticosteroid injection for the treatment of lateral elbow tendinopathy. Method PubMed, Web of Science, and Embase were searched using headings related to treatment options for Lateral elbow tendinopathy. The following keywords were used: lateral epicondylitis, physical therapy, and corticosteroid injection. Result We descriptively analyzed and reviewed a total of 12 studies including a total of 1253 patients for lateral elbow tendinopathy. The physical therapy intervention included interventions like electrotherapy, manual therapy, and exercise. The studies included had an overall low to unknown risk of bias. Conclusion Our review suggests corticosteroid injection provides beneficial short-term effects and physical therapy interventions provide intermediate to long-term effects, less additional treatment and low recurrence rate in patients with lateral elbow tendinopathy. Although high-quality randomized control trials are required in order to have a better understanding of both intervention types.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.