Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2023 Feb 2;12(3):1205.
doi: 10.3390/jcm12031205.

Clinical Effectiveness of Dry Needling in Patients with Musculoskeletal Pain-An Umbrella Review

Marjolein Chys  1 , Kayleigh De Meulemeester  1 , Indra De Greef  1 , Carlos Murillo  1   2 , Wouter Kindt  1 , Yassir Kouzouz  1 , Bavo Lescroart  1 , Barbara Cagnie  1
Affiliations
Review

Clinical Effectiveness of Dry Needling in Patients with Musculoskeletal Pain-An Umbrella Review

Marjolein Chys et al. J Clin Med. .

Abstract

The number of systematic reviews (SR) summarizing the literature regarding the clinical effects of Dry Needling (DN) has increased rapidly. Yet, rigorous evidence about the clinical effectiveness of this technique is still lacking. The aim of this umbrella review is to summarize the evidence about the clinical effects of trigger point DN on musculoskeletal disorders across all body regions. PubMed, Web of Science and Embase were searched to identify SRs examining the effect of DN (as a stand-alone intervention or combined with another treatment modality) compared to sham/no intervention or a physical therapy (PT) intervention with at least one clinical outcome in the domain of pain or physical functioning. Risk of bias (RoB) was assessed with the AMSTAR-2 tool. Quantification of the overlap in primary studies was calculated using the corrected covered area (CCA). The electronic search yielded 2286 results, of which 36 SRs were included in this review. Overall, DN is superior to sham/no intervention and equally effective to other interventions for pain reduction at short-term regardless of the body region. Some SRs favored wet needling (WN) over DN for short-term pain reductions. Results on physical functioning outcomes were contradictory across body regions. Limited data is available for mid- and long-term effects. DN has a short-term analgesic effect in all body regions and may be of additional value to the interventions that are used to date in clinical practice. Several studies have shown an additional treatment effect when combining DN to physiotherapeutic interventions compared to these interventions in isolation. There is a substantial need for the standardization of DN protocols to address the problem of heterogeneity and to strengthen the current evidence.

Keywords: disability; dry needling; musculoskeletal disorder; pain; physical functioning; trigger point; umbrella review.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Prisma flow diagram.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Walker-Bone K., Palmer K.T., Reading I., Coggon D., Cooper C. Prevalence and impact of musculoskeletal disorders of the upper limb in the general population. Arthritis Rheum. 2004;51:642–651. doi: 10.1002/art.20535. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Malik K.M., Beckerly R., Imani F. Musculoskeletal Disorders a Universal Source of Pain and Disability Misunderstood and Mismanaged: A Critical Analysis Based on the U.S. Model of Care. Anesth. Pain Med. 2018;8:e85532. doi: 10.5812/aapm.85532. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Govaerts R., Tassignon B., Ghillebert J., Serrien B., De Bock S., Ampe T., El Makrini I., Vanderborght B., Meeusen R., De Pauw K. Prevalence and incidence of work-related musculoskeletal disorders in secondary industries of 21st century Europe: A systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Musculoskelet. Disord. 2021;22:751. doi: 10.1186/s12891-021-04615-9. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Kalichman L., Vulfsons S. Dry needling in the management of musculoskeletal pain. J. Am. Board Fam. Med. 2010;23:640–646. doi: 10.3122/jabfm.2010.05.090296. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Dommerholt J., Fernández-de-Las-Peñas C., Petersen S.M. Needling: Is there a point? J. Man. Manip. Ther. 2019;27:125–127. doi: 10.1080/10669817.2019.1620049. - DOI - PMC - PubMed