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The needle effect in the relief of myofascial pain
Abstract
In reviewing techniques for therapeutic local anaesthesia of pain spots, it appeared that the common denominator was puncture by the needle and not the anaesthetic employed. The present study examines short- and long-term effects of dry needling in the treatment of chronic myofascial pain. 241 patients and 312 pain sites were treated by needling. When the most painful spot was touched by the needle, immediate analgesia without hypesthesia was observed in 86.8% of cases. Permanent relief of tenderness in the needled structure was obtained for 92 structures; relief for several months in 58; for several weeks in 63; and for several days in 32 out of 288 pain sites followed up. The effectiveness of treatment was related to the intensity of pain produced at the trigger zone, and to the precision with which the site of maximal tenderness was located by the needle. The immediate analgesia produced by needling the pain spot has been called the "needle effect".
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Cited by
Myofascial Trigger Points Then and Now: A Historical and Scientific Perspective
Shah, J. P., Thaker, N., Heimur, J., Aredo, J. V., Sikdar, S., & Gerber, L. (2015) · PM&R · doi:10.1016/j.pmrj.2015.01.024 · Cited by 476
Pathophysiologic and electrophysiologic mechanisms of myofascial trigger points
Hong, C.-Z., & Simons, D. G. (1998) · Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation · doi:10.1016/s0003-9993(98)90371-9 · Cited by 466
Dry needling: a literature review with implications for clinical practice guidelines
Dunning, J., Butts, R., Mourad, F., Young, I., Flannagan, S., & Perreault, T. (2014) · Physical Therapy Reviews · doi:10.1179/108331913x13844245102034 · Cited by 346
Kleinhenz, J., Streitberger, K., Windeler, J., Gübacher, A., Mavridis, G., & Martin, E. (1999) · Pain · doi:10.1016/s0304-3959(99)00107-4 · Cited by 294
Fricton, J. (2016) · Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Clinics of North America · doi:10.1016/j.coms.2016.03.010 · Cited by 79
Metadata
- Authors
- Lewit, K.
- Venue
- Pain
- Published
- 1979-02
- Volume
- 6
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 83-90
- ISSN
- 0304-3959 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2162544682
- Cited by
- 405
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 0.89
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- Lewit, K. (1979). The needle effect in the relief of myofascial pain. Pain. https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-3959(79)90142-8
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
