Dry Needling vs Massage Therapy for Low Back Pain: Which is Better?
Low back pain is a common reason people look to healthcare providers of various backgrounds for assistance in managing pain and stiffness. Some people go to their primary care providers, which typically leads to (many times unnecessary) referrals for imaging, specialists, and/ or prescriptions to mask pain symptoms. Others look for conservative means including chiropractic, physical therapy, and/ or massage therapy.
While there is a good deal of research looking into specific outcomes of conservative means of managing pain, a recent study by Ma et al. (2021) compared dry needling (DN) to massage therapy (MT) for non-specific low back pain (NSLBP).
This study looked at pain, functional outcomes/ disability, and quality of life as prognostic indicators of improvement for both interventions. These indicators were measured immediately following DN or MT, and at 3 and 12 months after the interventions. After 12 months, both DN and MT showed comparable outcomes in all measured indicators of improvement vs how the patients felt before DN or MT.
However, DN was shown to be SIGNIFICANTLY MORE effective than MT at improving pain intensity, functional outcomes, functional disability, and quality of life at long-term follow-up.
So think about giving DN education a try and see what it can do for your patients! AOPT Seminars is a leading provider of DN and exercise-based continuing education courses, with years of experience in DN training and teaching through various programs and not beholden to learning ONLY ONE style of DN!
An excellent resource for learning about what DN actually does can be found at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4117383/.