Symptoms in the wrist | You can recognize tennis elbow by these symptoms!

Symptoms in the wrist

The muscles whose tendon attachments are inflamed in tennis elbow pull over the wrist and attach to the back of the hand or fingers. Tennis elbow not only causes an inflammation at the tendon attachment point, but also causes tension and shortening of the affected muscles. The tenseness results in a bad posture, which can then also affect the wrist and lead to pain here.

The pain in the wrist usually does not occur at the beginning of the symptoms of tennis elbow, but only becomes noticeable after a longer period of time. At the same time, they are also a sign that the tennis elbow is not improving with the attempted treatment methods. Pain in the wrist restricts the patient even more than a tennis elbow would do without pain in the wrist. The function of the arm is additionally limited and gripping and lifting objects is only possible with pain. If the pain begins to spread to the wrist during tennis elbow, the current treatment should be reconsidered and, if necessary, adapted to the new pain situation.

Weakness in the wrist

Tennis elbow can also cause weakness in the wrist, which can eventually lead to a reduction in strength. As a result, the entire arm is functionally severely restricted, especially the grip is extremely difficult. Everyday movements such as shaking hands or even just taking a pen (pain while writing) in the hand can cause extreme pain for those affected.

As a result, the quality of life is often severely affected. A tremor of the hands can have many different causes. If the tremor occurs for the first time in the context of tennis elbow and also only on the affected arm, a connection with tennis elbow is very likely.

Due to the inflamed tendon attachment points in tennis elbow, the performance of the muscles is limited. The tendon attachment point cannot be stressed as much as in a healthy condition, which means that the muscle can build up less strength. Tension, shortening and the resulting poor posture further increase the reduction in performance.

As a result, the forearm extensor muscles are more quickly exhausted and overstrained; this overstraining can manifest itself in a tremor.The phenomenon is similar to trembling after a strenuous training session: Frequent strain on a muscle reduces performance and trembling can become noticeable after training. In tennis elbow, the performance of the muscles is reduced to such an extent that trembling can also occur during normal everyday movements. It is possible that the hand and forearm are affected by the tremor.

In some patients, the painful tennis elbow also leads to a reduction in sensitivity in the affected forearm. In most cases, the loss of sensitivity is only slightly to moderately pronounced and can manifest itself as numbness or tingling, or a combination of both. In tennis elbow, an inflammatory process occurs in the area of the tendon attachments of the forearm extensors.

It is suspected that the inflammation affects the sensitive nerves of the skin and thus triggers the numbness. The numbness may only extend to a small area near the elbow or may also spread from the forearm towards the wrist. If the tennis elbow is accompanied by a numbness, a disease of the cervical spine should be ruled out, which can also cause sensitivity disorders of the arm.

Another disease with similar symptoms is the sulcus-ulnaris syndrome, in which the ulnar nerve can be paralyzed by frequent pressure. This happens, for example, when the patient frequently rests or sleeps on the bent elbow. In the case of sulcus ulnaris syndrome, however, the numbness is not limited to the elbow and forearm, but also includes the ring and little finger of the affected side.