Comparison of the effect of two different types of dry-needling techniques on subacromial impingement syndrome

Introduction: Infraspinatus is one of the main muscles that is involved in the subacromial impingement syndrome. Dry needling and routine physical therapy can improve this syndrome. However, the dry needling technique is not well defined.

Design: randomized controlled clinical trial, single-blind study.

Method: Sixty-six patients diagnosed with shoulder impingement syndrome were recruited and randomly divided into three groups.

Interventions: In 1st group; patients received deep dry needling technique in addition to routine physical therapy, in Hong's group; patients received Hong's dry needling technique in addition to routine physiotherapy and in third group; patient just received routine physical therapy.

Main outcome measure(s): Before, immediately after and 4 weeks after the intervention, pain, disability and the pressure pain threshold were measured.

Results: The findings of this study indicated that in DDN group, pain and disability reduction was significantly more than two other groups. Although, the pressure pain tolerance increased in all three groups after treatment, but the increase between groups was not significantly different. All study groups showed reduction in pain, while there was no significant difference between the three groups.

Conclusion: Pain and disability reduction in the DDN group compared to the other two groups may reveal the treatment with deep dry needling technique along with routine physiotherapy is more effective than receiving dry needling with Hong's technique or routine physiotherapy alone. However, there was no significant difference between the three groups in pressure pain tolerance threshold and pain reduction.