What is Dry Needling for Dogs?
At Plymouth Veterinary Hospital, Inc., we offer a unique form of physical therapy that helps decrease musculoskeletal pain in dogs!
In canine physical therapy, numerous manual therapies are utilized to decrease a pet's musculoskeletal pain. Trigger point dry needling is such a technique. Therapeutic, trigger point dry needling aims to reduce your dog's myofascial pain caused by myofascial trigger points and the resulting muscle spasm and dysfunction.
Dry needling is a general term for a therapeutic procedure that involves multiple advances of a filament needle (sterile needle) into the myofascial trigger points.
Dry needling is not an injection, but sterile placed needles that deactivate the trigger point (or knotted muscle), thereby reducing pain and restoring regular length and function of the involved muscle. Dry needling is an effective treatment for acute and chronic pain, rehabilitation from injury, and even pain and injury prevention, with very few side effects.
Dry needling also benefits the immune, inflammatory, biochemical, vascular, and neurological systems. Dry needling is extremely effective at eliminating canine neuromuscular dysfunction that leads to pain and functional deficits.
The Difference Between Dry Needling and Acupuncture
- Dry needling is a technique that emphasizes treating the neuro-musculoskeletal systems based on pain patterns, muscular dysfunction, and other orthopedic signs and symptoms.
- Dry needling relies upon the time of treatment of physical examination and assessment to guide treatment.
- Acupuncture is a treatment based on eastern medical diagnosis, requiring training in Chinese medicine.
- Acupuncture is the stimulation of specific acupuncture points along the skin of the body. According to traditional Chinese medicine, stimulating specific acupuncture points corrects imbalances in the flow of qi through channels known as meridans.