What is the role of surgery when treating an overuse tendinitis?

Question

What is the role of surgery when treating an overuse tendinitis?

By overuse tendinitis, I really mean tendinitis, not tendinosis.

{1} indicates that the role of surgery when treating an overuse tendinitis is unknown, but the paper was published over 15 years ago.

I am mostly interested in epicondylopathies (medial or lateral, i.e., tennis elbows and golfer elbows)

---

References:

• {1} Khan, Karim M., Jill L. Cook, Jack E. Taunton, and Fiona Bonar. "Overuse tendinosis, not tendinitis: part 1: a new paradigm for a difficult clinical problem." The Physician and sportsmedicine 28, no. 5 (2000): 38-48. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=13346535918941309441&hl=en&as_sdt=0,22 ; http://www.massagebyjoel.com/downloads/OveruseTendinosis-PhysSptsmed.pdf ; http://dx.doi.org/10.3810/psm.2000.05.890

Answer 1

Depending on your age, clinical treatment with rest, physiotherapy, NSAID, epicondylitis, both lateral and medial, may take one to several months to resolve. Surgery is a last resort and should be reserved to those cases where there is complete rupture of a tendon.