Dry Needling Masterclass Series; 

Welcome to our weekly dry needling masterclass series. If you are not familiar with dry needling, I did a few posts late last year on how this treatment therapy works. Here are a few of the key concepts but do feel free to scroll back and find the original posts (you may discover lots of other knowledge bombs along the way too). 

Dry needling is a relatively modern treatment based within Western Medicine that is designed to ease muscular pain.

The identification of trigger points, a ‘knot’ within the muscle, led to dry needling being created. It was hypothesised that the needle entering the muscle would elicit a response that is highly effective at easing the taut band of musculature. 

Let us jump straight in and see the clinical use cases for dry needling. 

Occipital Neuralgia

Occipital Neuralgia is a condition in which the occipital nerves, the nerves that run through the scalp, are injured or inflamed. This causes headaches that feel like severe piercing, throbbing or shock-like pain in the upper neck, back of the head or behind the ears, and can often feel like there is pressure behind the eye.

The application of dry needling into trigger points of suboccipital muscles induces significant improvement of headache index, trigger points tenderness, functional rating index and range of motion in patients with occipital neuralgia.