Episode Summary
Learn a practical, structured approach to elbow examination, from taking a targeted history to assessing pain, instability, nerve symptoms, and range of motion. You’ll also spot key red flags, distinguish common conditions, and build confidence using focused clinical tests.
Elbow examination is presented as a structured process that begins with careful history-taking before moving to physical assessment. Key history points include pain, stiffness, locking, instability, paresthesia, mechanism of onset, bruising patterns, occupational and sporting demands, comorbidities such as diabetes or hypercholesterolemia, and medications that may affect tendon health.
The examination then covers observation, including carrying angle, deformity, resting posture, skin quality, muscle wasting, bursae, scars, and bruising. Bony landmarks and normal movement patterns are reviewed, along with how to record flexion, extension, pronation, and supination correctly and what ranges are considered functional.
A quadrant-based approach follows: anterior, lateral, medial, and posterior elbow. Learners are guided through common causes of pain in each region and the main clinical tests used for distal biceps rupture, lateral epicondylalgia, nerve entrapments, ligament instability, ulnar nerve problems, medial collateral injury, triceps pathology, olecranon bursitis, and posterior impingement. The overall message is to examine logically, interpret findings in context, and avoid relying on any single test in isolation.
