Life Insurance With Tennis Elbow Or Golfer's Elbow
The names suggest a sports injury and the reality is usually a trade.
Plumbers, chefs, decorators, carpenters and anybody who grips and twists repeatedly get this far more often than tennis players do, and it is frequently slow to resolve.
This page covers what we would ask, and the one treatment that is worth naming specifically.
The short answer
Tennis elbow is pain where the tendons attach on the outer side of the elbow, and golfer's elbow is the same thing on the inner side. The names are misleading, because most cases come from work or repetitive lifting rather than sport. The parts worth declaring are any steroid injection, any referral, and whether it has affected your ability to work.
What it is
Both are tendinopathies: degenerative change and pain where forearm tendons attach at the elbow. Lateral epicondylitis, tennis elbow, affects the outer side and hurts on gripping and lifting. Medial epicondylitis, golfer's elbow, affects the inner side.
Management is usually load reduction, exercises and physiotherapy, with braces and painkillers. Persistent cases are sometimes treated with steroid injection, and a small number go on to surgery. Recovery is commonly measured in months.
Why it comes up on an application
- Steroid injection is the treatment worth naming, because it means a clinician was involved and it is a procedure rather than advice.
- Surgery is uncommon but is a clear entry with a date if it applies to you.
- The occupational link is strong, so whether it has affected your work is a genuine question rather than a formality, particularly for manual trades.
- It frequently affects both arms over a career in a gripping trade, and a bilateral history is more substantial than a single episode.
- Persistent elbow pain is sometimes scanned, and any imaging counts as an investigation.
What we would ask you
- Which elbow, or both, and roughly when it started
- Whether it has settled, and whether it has come back
- Whether you have had a steroid injection, physiotherapy or surgery
- Whether it has affected your work or made you change what you do
- Whether you are currently off work or working reduced hours because of an accident, injury or illness
- Whether you are waiting on any medical tests, appointments or treatment
- Whether you have been diagnosed with or treated for cancer in the last five years
- Whether a parent, brother or sister was diagnosed with cancer, heart disease or a stroke before 65
- Any medication you take
- Whether you smoke, and your date of birth
Name The Injection
Of everything on this page, the steroid injection is the detail most often left off a form and the easiest to include.
People describe their treatment as physio, or as resting it, and forget the injection because it took five minutes in a clinic room. On a medical record it is a procedure performed by a clinician, and a question about treatment is asking about it.
If you have had more than one, say how many and roughly when. It is a line of text and it makes the difference between a complete answer and an incomplete one.
Both Elbows Is A Different History
This is specific to repetitive load conditions and it is worth drawing out.
A single episode in one elbow after an unusual amount of DIY is a small entry. Both elbows, over several years, in somebody whose trade involves gripping and twisting all day, describes a pattern rather than an incident.
That matters most for income protection rather than for life cover. A trade whose working life depends on grip has a real exposure, and the honest question is what happens to the earnings if the grip goes. That is what an own occupation definition is for, because somebody with a bad elbow can plainly do other work and an any occupation policy will say so.
Which cover is relevant
The relevant cover for a gripping trade. Tennis elbow in a plumber or a chef is a realistic reason for time off, and own occupation wording matters because you can still do desk work with a bad elbow.
The usual starting point for protection generally. An elbow is seldom a factor in what is available.
Pays on diagnosis of a listed serious condition, and this is not one. Worth having for the risks it does cover.
Common questions
Do I need to declare tennis elbow?+
Answer what you are asked. If a question covers joint or muscle conditions, or treatment and specialists, then yes. The steroid injection, if you had one, is the part most often left off and the easiest to include.
Will it affect my life insurance?+
Rarely the interesting part of an application, and what any insurer decides rests on your whole picture. For a manual trade the more useful conversation is income protection.
Does it matter that I got it from work rather than sport?+
For life cover, not especially. For income protection it matters a great deal, because a condition caused by your daily work is likely to recur as long as you keep doing that work, and that is exactly what the cover responds to.
I have had it in both arms. Is that worse?+
It is a more substantial history and worth describing as such, with rough dates. Whether it affects what is offered is the insurer's decision, which is what we would find out rather than predict.
Why does the policy definition matter for this?+
Because somebody with a bad elbow can obviously do seated work, so an any occupation policy is likely to find them fit. An own occupation definition asks whether you can do your actual trade, which for a gripping trade is the question that matters.
Cover that often goes with this
The gaps we most often find sitting next to this one.