“Sticking” to the facts – Dry Needling Not Effective for Knee Pain
With all the hype surrounding the fad of dry needling one would assume it is very effective. However, when you look at the quality, scientific research (and no, we are not talking case studies), the support to use dry needling as an intervention is just not there!
The article below is a randomized controlled trial and it shows that people who had patellofemoral pain (knee pain) received NO further benefit by being stuck with needles than those that received other, non-invasive interventions such as therapeutic exercise and manual therapy.
SO…if you were a patient with knee pain and your physical therapist wanted to stick you with needles even though there was no benefit to them doing that, would you want them to anyway? I know I would not! I will take some exercises and hands on treatment and be on my way!
https://www.jospt.org/doi/full/10.2519/jospt.2017.7389?code=jospt-site
Stay tuned for more science based physical therapy information! If you have any further questions regarding dry needling, please feel free to contact me at (402)934-8688.