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needle therapy
40
NOV / DEC 2014
I
Healthcare Journal of new orleans
medical education hours by the American
Medical Association.
By contrast, dry needling is under the
purview of the Louisiana Physical Therapy
Board, which has established standards of
practice for dry needling in the state. Specifi-
cally, a physical therapist wishing to engage
in dry needlingmust have two years of expe-
rience as a licensed physical therapist and
have completed 50 hours of face-to-face
instruction in intramuscular dry needling
treatment and safety. In addition, therapists
must obtain informed consent frompatients
focuses on meridians in the body and on
placing needles along these meridians. In
addition, other factors such as energy flow
are involved in acupuncture.
“Dry needling, by contrast, is a west-
ern approach, based on focusing on trig-
ger points in the body. There is a local-
ized area of muscle activity in a
patient which we search out.
These are usually sore to the
touch, causing some pain;
often they’re like a knot.
In response to the nee-
dle, the muscle twitches,
which leads to an overall
relaxation of the muscle.
It goes from being tightly
wound to more relaxed; this
enables it to work like normal
muscle tissue.”
Dry needling usually involves penetrating
deeper into the muscle tissue than is typi-
cal in acupuncture. “The application of the
needles requires care,” says Helwig.
Taryn Cohn, MSPT, COMT, has been
practicing dry needling at Baudry Therapy
Center for about two years. “Dry needling
is very effective in cases of low back pain,
neck pain, shoulder pain, radicular nerve
pain in the upper and lower extremities,
and with chronic, hard-to-treat conditions
like plantar fasciitis andAchilles tendonitis,”
she says.
Cohn believes that quickness of results
is a significant benefit of dry needling.
“Although dry needling is often not with-
out its moments of discomfort, they are not
long in duration and the results are immedi-
ate,” she says. “Once you are able to release
the trigger points and relieve the painful
stimuli often associated with trigger points,
DavidWinkler-Schmit
before beginning dry
needle therapy.
“I often think the
best way to describe dry
needling is to talk about
what it is NOT,” says Ronald F.
Helwig, PT, DPT, FAAOMPT, who includes
dry needling in the services he performs at
Magnolia Physical Therapy. “It is not acu-
puncture, even though there are similari-
ties, specifically in that both processes use
the same needle. Acupuncture is an Eastern
philosophy and approach to treatment. It
Ronald F. Helwig, PT, DPT,
FAAOMPT, includes dry
needling in the services
he performs at Magnolia
Physical Therapy.