Title : Comparison of effects of dry needling with conventional physiotherapy treatment in knee osteoarthritis patients for pain management and improving functional ability .
Tahreem Anwar
Introduction : Knee osteoarthritis is a common condition which causes pain , functional limitation , disability and progressive deterioration of joint . Different non pharmacological treatments preferred over pharmacological treatments due to less side effects . Conventional physical therapy and dry needling is one of them . The objective of our study was to compare the effectiveness of dry needling with conventional physical therapy in knee osteoarthritis patients and identify the more effective treatment modality between them .
Methods : It was a quasi-experimental study of four month duration . Purposive sampling technique was used to collect data of 30 patients at Syed medical complex and Amin Welfare & Teaching Hospital Sialkot , after ethical approval . There was a predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria for the patients . They were randomly allocated in to two groups ( A and B ). Group A received conventional physical therapy treatment and group B received dry needling . Both groups received moist heat as a baseline . Treatment duration was of three weeks , 2 sessions per week , for both groups .
This study was approved by Riphah Ethics Committee wide Ref : No . RCR & AHS / REC MS- OMPT / 027 dated 15-10-2018 .
Results : Both dry needling and conventional physical therapy presented significant outcomes to reduce pain and functional limitation . Pre-treatment mean + SD of WOMAC score in group A was 50.07 + 11.835 and in group B was 45.87 + 12.512 . Post treatment mean + SD of WOMAC score in group A was 38.87 + 13.731 and in group B 24.33 + 8.926 . Score of WOMAC scale and numeric rating scale is improved in both groups but B group B showed significant improvement as compared to group A .
Conclusion : The results of this study concluded that both conventional physical therapy and dry needling are effective to manage pain and functional limitation in knee osteoarthritis patients . But dry needling proved more effective as compare to conventional physical therapy .
Impact : Dry Needling is a newly used intervention for the management of pain and improvement of functional outcomes in patients with Knee Osteoarthritis in Pakistan . Further studies with larger sample size and blind study designs may be carried out in multicentre studies to produce more generalizable results .
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