Capsular Impingement

What's impingement?

When you're suffering from impingement, your tissue is 'sandwiched' between two bones. This causes painful bones, and it's felt mainly when raising or moving the elbow. The word impingement means collision.

Causes

The impingement can be caused by a swelling of the elbow. This causes the tissue to get impinged sooner when you move your elbow. Another cause may be the reduction of space below the radius, resulting in it getting pushed forward. This happens if some muscles do not function properly. The radius can also have an unfavourable shape, which results in a reduction of space, causing impingement.

Symptoms

Because this syndrome has different causes, the symptoms can vary depending on the patient. Typical complaints are, pain on the outside of the elbow, sometimes radiating to the forearm and in the most severe cases all the way to the hand. The pain can be felt when the arm or elbow is raised. In addition, pain can be felt when turning the elbow and when lifting heavy objects.

Treatment

Treatment aims at reducing pain and improving mobility and muscular function. Train your muscles by doing stretching exercises that will normalize the muscle length of shortened muscle tissue. If you're experiencing severe pain, it is wise to take an injection that slows down inflammation. Furthermore, physiotherapy is always an effective method as the complaints greatly reduced if therapy is applied within 6 to 12 weeks. To help prevent these problems from reoccurring and to help you rehabilitate from them, it is also recommended to wear a brace. Like the Bauerfeind EpiTrain Elbow Bandage.