Radiotherapy treatment for chronic tendonitis?

[Stillsmiling_Just]

Hello, I've got arthritis and have also been living with recurrent hip tendonitis, shoulder bursitis, plantar fasciitis, Achilles tendonitis and hand joint pain. I've been seen by a rheumatologist as I thought they may be connected but the blood tests didn't pick up anything. I have found the tendonitis in my hip so debilitating, I've had two steroid injections in it that helped temporarily and I've also had months of physiotherapy but it's still so painful. I've read sometimes drs treat chronic tendonitis with Radiotherapy and wondered if any one had experienced this type of treatment? Thanks for reading my post.

[artyone]

Hi sorry for your pain.i had it in hip so bad I couldn't sit or stand.i had injections to see which helped for a while. My physio gave me an exercise it was like magic gone.every time I feel it i I do it gone. So feet shoulder width apart. Hands on small of back .chin on chest. Now grip bottom.lean back clenching bum. Do this 12 times .clench lean back fairly quickly . Then bend forward to touch toes . Repeat 3 times. Doesn't matter if u can't reach toes just try. Keep legs straight. Works a treat .hope it helps x

[Stillsmiling_Just in reply to artyone]

Hi artyone, thank you for the exercise suggestion. I'm not aware of that one so I'll give it a go and also talk to my physiotherapist about it. I'm really pleased it helped you as it is such a strong and pervading pain. Thanks

[earthwitch]

I think radiotherapy has been used in some cases of spondyloarthritis, as spondy causes calcifications on the inflamed outer surfaces of bone at the point where tendons join bone (entheses) - the radiotherapy is used to stop those extra calcified bone growths. I've heard of someone reasonably recently who has ankylosing spondylitis who had radiotherapy with a hip replacement operation, as again, they wanted to avoid the possibility of the osteophyte growth around the new joint. That wasn't in the UK though. The paper (link below) from 2007 seems to suggest that a fairly high proportion of people treated with radiation have good success, but I don't know how they screened the participants or what the cause of their tendonitis was (autoimmune disease or over use)

ro-journal.biomedcentral.co...

[Stillsmiling_Just]

Hello earthwitch, thanks so much for your message and information. I was not sure if this was done in the UK or not but it's hopeful to hear some papers are being written about it with hopefully people benefiting. Let's hope researchers revisited area of treatment as it may bring benefits to people with arthritis and connective tissue problems.