Dry needling is acupuncture & training for dry needling is insufficient & a danger to the public!
Medical practitioners should be held to the same standards in regard to longer training to practice dry needling(acupuncture). Their courses are only about 54 hours. Acupuncturists undergo 3000 hours of class and clinical supervised training. Both acupuncture and dry needling use the same principles of practice. They call them trigger points, we call them ashi points. They buy needles labeled acupuncture needles. Both acupuncture and dry needling have undergone numerous studies using scientific methods. Acupuncture has been around for 3000 years and has a more archaic language to describe patterns and to diagnose. At the very least, western medical practitioners should have to undergo a specialized training for medical acupuncture to protect the public. I have seen training videos for dry needling in which instructors are inserting needles too deeply & in one video, actually pierced the lung causing a pneomothorax requiring emergency surgery. In acupuncture school, we had multiple yearlong courses teaching us depth and direction of needles so to avoid arteries, veins, nerves, organs, etc. This simply cannot be understood in the current dry needling seminars.