Retrospective comparison of the efficacy of corticosteroid and dry needling in lateral epicondylitis

Lateral epicondylitis (LE) commonly known as tennis elbow (as it affects 50% of tennis players) is also a general public health issue as it affects a high number of the general population.The preferred method of treatment most commonly is a local corticosteroid (CS) injection with or without the addition of a local anesthetic 6. Dry needling (DN) is another treatment modality which is commonly employed for the management of LE.The purpose of our study was to evaluate whether DN is as effective as CS injections in the management of LE. The number of patients included in our study was 146. Patients were divided into two groups. One that had been treated with corticosteroid injections (Group A) and one that had been treated with dry needling (Group B).Patient evaluation forms/records at 4 weeks and 12 weeks, were retrieved and analyzed. For this modified criteria of Verhaar et al was utilized.The study suggests that both the techniques, i.e dry needling as well as corticosteroid injections are reliable methods for treatment of lateral epicondylitis.