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Dry Needling Updates

Writer's picture: Tara Albright DPTTara Albright DPT

Dry needling has been in practice for many years, but over the last 10 years has increased in popularity, particularly in western medicine among physical therapist. Dry needling has become a common form of treatment for various musculoskeletal conditions, and has been very useful in assisting people out of pain and back into their functional lives. The focus of this blog is to discuss some of these more recent studies, as well as pull from past studies that have shown the benefits of dry needling and highlight updates from our previous blog in 2020.




Although there has been more research done in the past 10-15 years regarding dry needling and its effectiveness in physical therapy, this research pool is still a bit limited and most of the studies conclude with “more research needs to be done”. This is not because dry needling is ineffective, but instead is mainly due to its novelty of use in the physical therapy realm. There is, however, quite an extensive amount of research discussing acupuncture over the past many decades that show the benefits of a needle being inserted into muscle, tendon, etc. and the subsequent benefits that come with that. Unfortunately, this research has been strongly discounted when discussing dry needling for the fact that they function in two different aspects of healthcare (i.e. Western Medicine Vs. Eastern Medicine). However, a study performed in 2016 showed that 88% of common myofascial trigger points align with the common meridian lines/points of Chinese medicine. Myofascial trigger points (MTrPs) are hyperirritable nodules in skeletal muscle and other connective tissue areas (i.e. ligaments, tendons, etc) that can produce pain and limitations. By understanding the fact that a great deal of MTrPs align with ancient Chinese meridian points, this expands our research pool of 20-30 years, to over 2000+ years. With that statement, we still understand that dry needling works to loosen up trigger point and provoke deep tissue healing at the cellular level. Whereas, acupuncture works on the eastern medicine concepts of realignment the energy, often referred to as Qi (Chi). Recognizing the similarities and differences between these two needling treatments, yet still pulling from the research with the knowledge of these two separate treatment methods can lead us to a better understanding of the benefits that can come from the use of needles to heal the body.   


With this research expansion there is a lot more support stating that the use of needling for the treatment of pain has been shown to be superior to the “regular treatment options”, showing a decrease in pain and an improvement in function. One systematic review published in May of 2024 (Xiong et al.) showed that myofascial cervical pain demonstrated a 1-2 point improvement in the pain visual analog scale (VAS), as well as an improvement of 2-5% in their functional scale scores (either SF-36 or NDI). For a better explanation of this, because many people do not have a great understanding of VAS and functional scale changes, this means people getting dry needling reported less pain and the fact that they could do more in their daily lives with this decrease in pain, than those who did not receive dry needling.


Another study that compared needling/acupuncture to massage therapy, published in 2023 (Epstein et al) showed that massage therapy showed more immediate decrease in VAS pain report by 3 points, but needling showed a longer lasting effect of pain decrease over fewer visits. Again, to sum up this study in a meaningful way, it showed that short-term results demonstrated lower pain with massage therapy, but the long term results in decease in pain and improved function were shown with the use of dry needling. These studies show that dry needling does have some benefits in decreasing pain and improving function. In physical therapy we often pair dry needling with massage, exercise, and other treatment methods to maximize the overall improvements.


Finally, an umbrella review, performed by Chys et al in 2023, showed that dry needling provided a relief of pain similar to “other pain reduction interventions” for short-term pain relief, across all body regions (i.e. everywhere in the body). It also showed that patient’s demonstrated a more rapid recovery and participants reported longer lasting relief, when dry needling was combined with other physical therapy treatment options. This shows that dry needling can be an effective tool in our tool bag to assist patients in reaching their goals more rapidly and possibly assist in longer lasting improvements to their function; therefore demonstrating an improved quality of life.


Overall, there are few cases, in our clinical setting, where patients will only get dry needling. Many of these patients who only come in for dry needling have had dry needling in the past and it worked so well that they use that as a tune-up every so often. These patients have often previously had PT and have a home program that they continue to do at home, so dry needling is used for 4-6 visits to get them back on track. A majority of our patients are getting dry needling as an adjunct to their physical therapy treatments, to assist in healing and pain relief. This has been helping our population of patients reach their goals and maintain function long after therapy is stopped. Patients continue to strengthening and stretch and it seems the combination approach, as in many cases, is the best treatment approach to help patients achieve their goals in an beneficial and meaningful way and to maintain their improvements long after therapy stops. If you are interested in adding dry needling to your treatment, please discuss this with your therapist, We have three physical therapist who perform dry needling and they can coordinate treatment plans with your personal PT and come up with a treatment plan that works best for you.

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