Dry needling is a broad term used to differentiate “non-injection” needling from the practice of “injection needling” which utilises a hyperdermic syringe and usually involves the injection of an agent such as saline, local anaesthetic or corticosteroid into the tissue or specific anatomical structures .In contrast to this, dry needling utilises a solid, filament needle, as is used in the practice of acupuncture, and relies on the stimulation of specific reactions in the target tissue for its therapeutic effect.
Dry needling, which is grounded on a western physiological idea, is also termed as such in order to differentiate it from its oriental counterpart which is the acupuncture.
For people who think that dry needling is similar to acupuncture, you are mistaken. Acupuncture is based on the ancient Chinese philosophy of the balance of Yin and Yang. Needling certain points along ‘meridians’ aid this process. Intramuscular Dry Needling is a method of reducing chronic pathological muscle shortening using needles.
There are a lot of dry needling schools of practice and they usually concern needling the myofascial trigger points in the body using the same needles used in acupuncture with the aim to deactivate and solve problems concerning certain trigger points.
What must be remembered about this method is that it has a lot of limitations and these limitations are the usual reasons why there are a lot of practitioners of dry needling therapy that could not deliver what their customers want. These limitations concerning the not so many techniques available and the dependency of the treatment on the trigger points. As a result, there are a lot of practitioners who do not use the method that much even if they started out being very excited about using the therapy.
The dry needling plus approach addresses many of the limitations of established dry needling practice by differentiating between a variety of needling techniques and applying them to specific changes identified in the tissue by means of skilled palpation and logical, range based physical assessment .
The dry needling plus approach demands a higher skill level of the practitioner than other approaches,however the rewards of investing time in attaining excellent assessment skills and needle technique are many.
In the hands of a skilled practitioner, dry needling can be used in most cases the majority of the time and with less energy expenditure on behalf of the practitioner and equal or better effect than other manual techniques currently being used. If practiced well there is also a remarkable absence of the “post treatment tissue soreness” often experienced by the subject following other manual therapy interventions.
As long as the practitioner understands anatomy sufficiently there are very few side effects. Side effects are very rare but when they do happen the most frequent and the most serious is that of a pneumothorax. This is where a needle pierces the lung leading to its partial or full collapse. This happens mostly when a needle is inserted into the Trapezius muscle in a certain way and too deeply.
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