Diagnosis of Elbow Pain

If you hit your elbow and start feeling pain right away, nobody would question the source of the pain. It is clearly due to trauma, and unless the direct hit is very severe, it will probably go away after a short while. But what if you experience sustained elbow pain? What if your symptoms are triggered when you use your hands without trauma? Then, the diagnosis of elbow pain is not so straightforward.

Doctors sometimes need imaging tests to diagnose more complex causes of elbow pain. However, it is not always necessary. This article will teach you a bit about how elbow pain is diagnosed using different maneuvers and tests. What doctors do is rule out a group of causes and then others. When the list of possible diagnoses is very short, a few maneuvers and tests will help doctors reach a final diagnosis.

The first aspect to consider is where the pain is located. Depending on the location, we have a list of likely diagnoses. So, if the pain is found outside the elbow, the lists of diagnoses corresponding to other areas are automatically ruled out.

Thus, let’s start by breaking down elbow pain into different locations and considering the list of diagnoses in each case.