Snapping Elbow Syndrome: A Report of Two Cases

Keith K. W. Chan and Ricky W. K. Wu

The Hong Kong Practitioner, Volume 33, No.4, December 2011, 159-168

Abstract

Snapping elbow syndrome is an uncommon clinical entity with snapping occurring either at the medial or the lateral side of the elbow during certain motions of the elbow. Patients sometimes present with pain or local tenderness instead of snapping which may lead to the wrong diagnosis of the more common tennis or golfer’s elbow syndrome. While making the clinical diagnosis of snapping elbow is obvious once the clinician is aware of the condition, to locate the cause of the snapping and arrive at an anatomical diagnosis can be difficult although it is crucial to successful treatment. In this article, we report two cases of snapping elbow syndrome, one at the lateral side and one at the medial side of the elbow, and share our experience with the use of musculoskeletal ultrasongraphy to arrive at an anatomical diagnosis of the condition.

Keywords : Snapping elbow