How is tendonitis diagnosed?

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How is tendonitis diagnosed?

Thursday, June 7th, 2007    Subscribe To Our Feed

Tendonitis is the inflammation of a tendon; tendons join muscles to the bone, so tendonitis can occur anywhere in your body - wherever there’s muscle. So tendonitis is referred to by the body part involved: hand tendonitis, Achilles tendonitis or patellar tendonitis (jumper’s knee.)

You can suspect that you have tendonitis when there’s swelling in the area involved, along with pain. The area may be red, as well as swollen, and hot to the touch - the heat is from inflammation.

The swelling suggests that there’s micro damage or a partial tear in the tendon, along with fluid. The pain of tendonitis can be a simple ache or stiffness, or more sever pain with a burning sensation, and it’s worse during activity, or after it.

Tendonitis is also associated with rheumatoid arthritis.

If your doctor is uncertain about whether you have tendonitis, he’ll send you for a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan to confirm the diagnosis.

What causes tendonitis?

Commonly tendonitis is caused by overuse. It can start when you begin to exercise or increase the level of your exercises, and it will then result in symptoms of tendonitis. It can also be caused by advancing age. As you get older, the tendons tend to lose their elasticity as well as ability to glide as smoothly as they are accustomed to doing. Older people will thus be more at risk of developing tendonitis, and the cause of such a condition does require more study and research in order to completely understand the true causes.

So if you’ve just boosted your exercise program, and there’s swelling and pain in an area of your body, that’s a hint that you’re over-doing it, and you need to cut back on the amount of exercise. Always increase your exercise slowly.

[tags]tendonitis, swelling, overuse, aging, tendon, pain[/tags]