Dry Needling Plus Conventional Physiotherapy for Patients With Chronic Nonspecific Neck Pain: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate the effect of conventional physiotherapy plus dry needling (DN) technique in patients with chronic nonspecific neck pain with sternocleidomastoid (SCM) and upper trapezius (UT) muscles involvement.                                                                               Methods: This study was designed as a single-blind randomized clinical trial. A total of 39 patients (19 men and 21 women) with chronic non-specific neck pain with a mean (SD) age of 38.13 (5.68) years, a mean (SD) height of 168.28 (8.34) cm, and a mean (SD) weight of 75.78 (9.02) kg participated in this study. They were randomly divided into conventional physiotherapy (control group = 19 people) and conventional physiotherapy plus DN (intervention group = 20 people). SCM and UT muscle pain, neck disability, and thickness were assessed for all participants in the pretest, posttest, and follow-up periods. This study was reviewed and approved by the Faculty of Physical Education and Sport Science, University of Kharazmi, Tehran, Iran.  Repeated measures analysis of variance and Bonferroni post hoc tests were used for data analysis using SPSS-22. Results: The results of 1-way analysis of variance showed that pain, neck disability, and SCM and UT muscle thickness in the intervention group had a significant decrease compared to the control group in the posttest and follow-up period (P <0.05).  Also, according to the results of the corrected Bonferroni post hoc test, the intervention group showed a greater effect size than the control group in the posttest and the follow-up periods in the above variables.                Conclusion: The present study results show that adding DN to conventional physiotherapy for neck pain can increase the effectiveness of intervention in relieving pain, disability, and SCM and UT muscle thickness in people with chronic neck pain.