Tendon Pain: Cortisone Injections Could Make It Worse

A review of 41 trials of the use of corticosteroid injections for non-inflammatory tendon pain like tennis elbow found that while cortisone injections help in the short-term, they can make it worse in the long term. Overall, data from the 28 studies comparing corticosteroids to other interventions found that corticosteroid benefits were short-lived. In the case of the three studies comparing corticosteroids to no treatment for tennis elbow, for instance, corticosteroids were associated with pain relief for up to eight weeks, but with greater pain at six months and one year. It's unclear why corticosteroids might cause long-term pain, but the researchers suggested the injection could weaken tendons' internal structure. There's also a potential for corticosteroids to mask the pain, enabling a person to inflict further damage on an already painful tendon.

Read the abstract in The Lancet.