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Short-Term Effects of PENS versus Dry Needling in Subjects with Unilateral Mechanical Neck Pain and Active Myofascial Trigger Points in Levator Scapulae Muscle: A Randomized Controlled Trial

2020; Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute; Volume: 9; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3390/jcm9061665

2077-0383

Santiago Garcia-de-Miguel, Daniel Pecos‐Martín, Tamara Larroca-Sanz, Beatriz Sanz-de-Vicente, Laura Garcia-Montes, Rubén Fernández-Matías, Tomás Gallego‐Izquierdo,

Shoulder Injury and Treatment

Procedures such as dry needling (DN) or percutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (PENS) are commonly proposed for the treatment of myofascial trigger points (MTrP). The aim of the present study is to investigate if PENS is more effective than DN in the short term in subjects with mechanical neck pain. This was an evaluator-blinded randomized controlled trial. Subjects were recruited through announcements and randomly allocated into DN or PENS groups. Pain intensity, disability, pressure pain threshold (PPT), range of motion (ROM), and side-bending strength were measured. The analyses included mixed-model analyses of variance and pairwise comparisons with Bonferroni correction. The final sample was composed of 44 subjects (22 per group). Both groups showed improvements in pain intensity (η