Does your arm ache from elbow to hand? Treatment at the Stoparthrosis clinic in Moscow

The nature of the sensations is half the diagnosis

The nature of the pain from the elbow to the hand can be different: aching, pulling, burning, stabbing.
It can occur at rest, during exercise, or when performing certain movements. It can be one-time occurrence, regularly recurring and continuous. Sometimes painful sensations are accompanied by dysfunction of the joints of the hand or fingers. In order to establish a diagnosis, the doctor needs to know all these features: their combinations allow, in some cases, to accurately establish the diagnosis without additional expensive studies.

Why does pain occur?

The main reasons why arms hurt from the elbow to the hand are the same as for wrist pain. This is inflammation. The factors that cause it are injuries, diseases of the spine and edema, and tunnel syndromes. Tumors are less common.

What diseases do the hands suffer from?

When the arm from the elbow to the hand is very painful after an injury or sudden load, you need to consult a traumatologist to rule out a fracture. If the sore spot swells and mobility is impaired, medical attention is needed immediately.

If the arm from the elbow to the hand hurts so much that it is impossible to tolerate, and there were no external reasons for this (trauma, overload), it is necessary to consult a doctor urgently, at any time of the day. This is how deep vein thrombosis can manifest itself. This condition is life-threatening.

Pain during ischemia and myocardial infarction can radiate to the arm, more often the left. In this case, the pain is always one-sided and occurs without connection with increased loads on the limb. In this case, pay attention to the general condition of the patient: is there any shortness of breath, are the lips turning blue. Measure your blood pressure. If there is the slightest deviation from the norm in the patient’s general condition, call an ambulance: without an ECG, even a doctor cannot confidently say whether there is a threat to life.

If the arm muscles from the elbow to the hand hurt more when bending the arm, you should suspect a problem with the elbow or shoulder joint - arthritis or arthrosis. Hands usually hurt on the bends of the wrists if one of the wrist joints is affected.

When a burning sensation and pain in the arm occur just below the elbow, and it hurts as if from inside the forearm to the hand, we can confidently speak of a pinched median nerve. Especially if the pain spreads to the fingers other than the little finger. This disease is caused by overexertion and, as a result, microtrauma and swelling of the muscle that lifts, flexes and rotates the forearm. Those at risk include musicians, dentists, athletes and nursing mothers. Depending on the load, pain can occur on one or both arms.

The outer side of the forearm is bothersome with radial nerve compression syndrome. The disease has three variants, which are distinguished by origin: the pain arose due to compression in the armpit (found in those who are forced to walk on crutches for a long time), in the middle of the shoulder (found in people who sleep deeply in uncomfortable positions, in newlyweds when one partner falls asleep with his head on the other’s shoulder, or directly at the elbow, which is caused by degeneration of the tissues surrounding the joint.

If, according to the patient, the bones of both arms from the elbow to the hand hurt, this is most often associated with diseases of the cervical spine.

Pain in bones, muscles, joints and forearm

Pain in the left shoulder joint and forearm often occurs with diseases of the heart, liver, spine, after a stroke, heart attack, with hepatitis, pneumonia, cervical osteochondrosis, tumors of tissues and organs of the chest, and with other diseases. Pain may indicate dysfunction of the bones, pathological changes in the tendons:

The elbow is pressed to the side, the arm turns outwards with the inner side - severe pain indicates a pathological process in the infraspinal tendon.
Severe pain in the left shoulder joint and forearm when moving the upper limb to the side or forward indicates damage to the supraspinal tendon.
The elbow is pressed to the side, the arm is turned with the outer side towards the body. Pain in the shoulder with this position of the arm indicates a pathological process in the subscapularis tendon.

How to find out the diagnosis

In order to establish a diagnosis for pain from the elbow to the hand in the right or left arm, first of all, examination data is used: many diseases and syndromes give an unambiguous reaction to certain motor tests, which easily makes it possible to establish a diagnosis.

X-ray or ultrasound examination can be used to clarify the diagnosis. Blood tests are rarely ordered. Diagnosis is carried out by a neurologist, a surgeon, and in rare cases, a cardiologist and an endocrinologist are involved.

Diagnostics

The causes of pain are determined by orthopedic traumatologists. To make a diagnosis, the results of a survey, physical examination, instrumental and laboratory techniques are used. May be assigned:

X-ray of the hand.
Performed in 2 or 3 projections, it makes it possible to diagnose fractures, dislocations, arthrosis, arthritis, osteomyelitis, and neoplasms.
CT scan of the hand.
More informative when studying solid structures. Recommended for complex fractures and fracture-dislocations, arthritis, arthrosis, osteoporosis. Allows you to accurately localize the area of damage, assess the nature and extent of the pathological process.
MRI of the hand.
Indicative when studying soft tissue formations. It is prescribed to study the condition of muscles, ligaments, tendons, blood vessels, and nerves. It is used for tendinitis, arthrosis, arthritis, purulent processes, and carpal tunnel syndrome.
Electrophysiological techniques.
They are used for neurological causes of pain in the hand to determine the level of nerve damage, assess nerve conduction, and the condition of muscle tissue.
Lab tests.
They are performed to identify signs of inflammation, specific markers, assess the activity of various organs in systemic pathologies, and study the structure of tissue during histological or cytological analysis.

To make an accurate diagnosis, an examination by a specialist is required.

Treatment, treatment and more treatment

If the arm between the hand and elbow hurts, treatment with anti-inflammatory drugs is started. It is better to use them internally; ointments and gels are indicated in rare cases. You can often start physiotherapy right away. After alleviating the pain, they begin to treat the cause of the disease or carry out treatment that is designed to prolong the period of remission. This could be massage, continuation of physiotherapy, but with other procedures, physical therapy. If the problem was caused by incorrect posture or load, the patient will have to change his habits.

If your right or left arm hurts in the area from the elbow to the hand, you should not delay seeing a doctor. Conditions that do not require treatment go away on their own within a few days, proceed without swelling, partial loss of sensitivity and motor function. All other cases require consultation with a doctor.

In the network of healthy spine clinics “Hello!” We employ certified doctors with many years of experience. Among them are doctors and candidates of medical sciences, professors and doctors of the highest qualification category, teachers of the department of osteopathy and manual therapy of the Russian Peoples' Friendship University. All of them have extensive experience as inpatients in leading medical and preventive institutions in Moscow and form the strongest team of experts in the field of diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the musculoskeletal system.

Complex treatment in the network’s clinics is provided by doctors in such specialized areas as traumatology and orthopedics, manual therapy and osteopathy, neurology and therapy, physiotherapy and reflexology, as well as specialists in other medical professions in demand among the population (cardiology, surgery, dietetics). Unique techniques and innovative equipment allow you to quickly and accurately make the correct diagnosis, and most importantly, correctly prescribe the necessary course of effective therapy.

What to do at home if your elbow hurts

Elbow pain can appear suddenly in a person or increase gradually. Their causes can also be obvious (trauma, inflammation) or completely unclear (slowly developing chronic inflammatory and degenerative pathological processes).

In any case, if you experience constant pain, you should not:

treat yourself with folk remedies or medicines that helped a neighbor;
panic – all this can be treated, but only by specialists; You will be helped in a medical clinic, Moscow - the clinic’s specialists have extensive experience in the treatment of pain syndrome of the elbow joint.

How to treat a sore elbow at home

There is no point in delaying a visit to the doctor. But sometimes circumstances develop in such a way that pain in the elbow needs to be relieved urgently, but there is no way to see a doctor. To temporarily eliminate pain in the elbow, you can use medicinal and non-medicinal means, but you need to remember that this will not cancel a visit to the doctor:

Painkillers in tablets:
medications from the group of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) - ketoprofen (Ketonal, Artrum) has the most powerful analgesic effect; You can take a 100 mg tablet once; contraindications: gastrointestinal ulcers, severe kidney and liver diseases;
nimesulide (Nise) is a medicine from the NSAID group that does not cause significant side effects from the gastrointestinal tract; for pain, you can take a 100 mg tablet.
Pain-relieving ointments, creams, gels – applied externally and can be no less effective than tablets; Moreover, they have no side effects (except for allergies) and contraindications:
ointments with ketoprofen : Bystrumgel, Artrum gel, Ketonal cream and gel;
ointments with nimesulide : gels Nise, Nimulid, Nimesulide.
Injections (injections of medicinal solutions). Many patients do not have a medical education, so it is better to replace injections with rectal (introduced into the rectum) suppositories (suppositories). In terms of absorption rate and effectiveness, this corresponds to intramuscular injections. The following rectal suppositories can be used:
Ketonal – at a dose of 100 mg; contraindications as for Diclofenac;
Indomethacin – 100 mg; contraindications, like Diclofenac.

Well, if you still know how to give injections, then you can administer 75 mg of Diclofenac intramuscularly (a medicinal solution of 3 ml is produced in ampoules, 25 mg in 1 ml, a total of 75 mg in an ampoule).

Drugs for treating acute pain in the elbows at home

Exercise therapy exercises will also help. If you experience significant pain before training, it is better to consult your doctor. But sometimes you can start doing the simplest light exercises on your own.

The main thing is to continue training every day, but do not overdo it, do not make sudden movements and do not continue training when the pain increases.

Effective exercises:

bending all the way and straightening the arms at the elbows; repeat 15 times;
rotational movements with arms bent at the elbows; do first 10 times to the left, then 10 to the right;
simultaneous squeezing of a tennis ball with the right and left hands; repeat 10 times.

What not to do if you have elbow pain

If you have constant pain in your elbow, then you shouldn’t:

lift weights;
constantly perform the same professional movements with a load on the elbow joint; if this is not possible, then you should change your job or give up playing sports such as tennis, basketball;
supercool;
constantly expose yourself to stress and overload at work;
smoking, regularly drinking alcohol;
self-medicate.

When you need to see a doctor urgently

This must be done if you have pain in your elbow:

accompanied by swelling and redness of the skin, increased body temperature;
do not go away, despite eliminating stress and taking painkillers;
accompanied by impaired movement and numbness of the hand;
increase during movements in the joint;
arise against the background of deformation of the elbow area.

If such symptoms appear, you cannot postpone visiting a doctor; this can lead to serious complications.