Tendonitis Treatment

Tendonitis is an inflamed tendon in one of your joints. A wrist strain, ankle sprain or tender Achilles heel may actually be tendonitis. Your chronic ankle strain may need ankle tendonitis treatment. Fortunately, stem cell treatment for tendonitis can heal your tendons and ease your pain. Stem cell therapy makes an effective wrist tendonitis treatment, elbow tendonitis treatment, knee tendonitis treatment, Achilles tendonitis treatment, patellar tendonitis treatment and peroneal tendonitis treatment.

Your tendons are thick, fibrous cords that attach your muscles to your bones. When pain from tendonitis occurs, it comes from your joints. Chronic ankle strain and wrist strain are examples of tendonitis. Any tendon in your body can become stretched or sore.

Tendonitis can occur in any joint and with varying degrees of severity, but it most commonly happens in your shoulder, knee or Achilles’ tendon. Other types of tendonitis include:

• Wrist strain
• Chronic ankle strain
• Ankle sprain
• Achilles tendonitis
• Peroneal tendonitis
• Patellar (kneecap) tendonitis
• Wrist tendonitis
• Scapular (shoulder) tendonitis
• Elbow tendonitis

The Causes of Tendonitis

If you play a sport that involves rapid acceleration — such as football or soccer — your Achilles’ tendon may develop tendonitis. Your ankles can also develop tendonitis, also known as an ankle sprain, if they’re over-rotated in one direction or the other. And it’s not just from playing sports; you get this injury from climbing stairs or even stepping off a curb.

On the other hand, years of layups, spikes or serves can cause a rotator cuff, elbow or wrist strain that’s very painful. These injuries can also happen due to repetitive motion at your workplace. Other more common names for these injuries are:

• Tennis elbow
• Golfer’s elbow
• Pitcher’s shoulder
• Swimmer’s shoulder
• Jumper’s knee

Telltale Tenderness

The easiest way to tell if you have tendonitis is to pay attention to where your pain is located. Joint pain, like a wrist strain, is probably tendonitis. Your pain more likely is a dull ache rather than a sharp pain. Moving the joint causes pain, it’s painful to touch and may be swollen or even discolored.

Most often, self-care improves your symptoms. But if your pain lingers for more than a few days and the swelling doesn’t subside, see a doctor. Failure to improve in a few days’ time signals a more serious injury.

Getting Treatment for Tendonitis

Your injury may be serious enough, or chronic enough, that your doctor or New York pain management specialist recommends surgery to repair the tendon. This is especially likely if your tendon has completely torn away from the bone. Chronic tendonitis may be treated with a technique called focused aspiration of scar tissue (FAST) that uses ultrasound and tiny instruments to remove scar tissue while leaving healthy tendons undisturbed. This method is said to help repair the tendon tissue faster because it’s far less invasive than conventional surgery.

If you recently suffered an injury or are battling a degenerative condition, you’re probably anxious to find relief. The prevailing wisdom for treating tendonitis has been to follow a conservative course. Most orthopedic doctors recommend traditional treatments that involve prolonged rest, corticosteroid injections, physical therapy and use of prescribed painkillers. A new, yet proven option is stem cell therapy.

With this tendonitis treatment, your own stem cells are used to trigger cellular regeneration. Stem cells are removed from your bone marrow, where they naturally originate, and then they’re injected into your problem joint. The injected cells stimulate regrowth of the damaged tendons. Therefore, this therapy heals you while stopping your pain, whether you need:

• Achilles tendonitis treatment
• Ankle tendonitis treatment
• Elbow tendonitis treatment
• Knee tendonitis treatment
• Patellar tendonitis treatment
• Peroneal tendonitis treatment
• Wrist tendonitis treatment

Stem Cell Therapy as Tendonitis Treatment

In addition to treating injuries, stem cells have been successfully used to treat degenerative hips, knees,  shoulders, feet and ankles. But stem cell injections have been particularly successful as a treatment for tendonitis. The success is due in part because stem cells:

• Contain anti-inflammatory properties to reduce the swelling
• Naturally lubricate your joint
• Ease your pain
• Stimulate the regrowth of tissue to actually repair the damage

Stem cell therapy is fast and minimally invasive. An outpatient procedure, it can be completed in an hour or less by a trained, experienced pain management specialist in New York. The simple step-by-step process involves:

1. Consulting with your doctor or specialist to determine if you’re a candidate for the procedure
2. Applying a local anesthetic to the area that your doctor uses to extract the stem cells
3. Inserting a thin needle, usually in your hip, to collect bone marrow
4. Dressing your puncture wound — a Band-Aid is enough
5. Spinning the bone marrow in a centrifuge to separate the stem cells
6. Injecting the stem cells into the joint with tendonitis

You may feel immediate results or the pain relief may take up to several weeks. In either case, your pain is reduced for the long term, as the stem cells work to repair the damaged tendon. The procedure provides greater flexibility too.

Complementary Procedures

Depending on the severity of your injury, your pain management specialist may opt for an additional treatment at the same time you get stem cell injections. These additional therapies are well suited for tendon repair and regeneration:

• Platelet rich plasma. This process involves taking your own blood, separating the platelets from the rest of the blood and then re-injecting the blood into the affected joint to help promote healing.
• Platelet lysate. This procedure involves an extra stem after your platelets are separated from the rest of blood. A process breaks down the platelets to yield more powerful growth factors.

Prolotherapy. This technique involves creating a low-level inflammation in your joint, which spurs additional resources from your own body to heal your joint.