Acupotomy for myofascial pain syndrome: What to report and why

BACKGROUND: Several needling-based procedures, including acupotomy, are used for myofascial pain syndrome. Established reporting guidance covers many aspects of acupuncture and other non-pharmacological interventions, but acupotomy reports may still omit procedural details needed for replication. OBJECTIVE: To identify procedure-specific details that may improve reporting of acupotomy for myofascial pain syndrome and clarify how these details relate to established reporting guidance. APPROACH: Using a non-systematic descriptive approach, we compared selected acupotomy procedural reports with STRICTA, TIDieR, CONSORT NPT, CONSORT 2025 and CONSORT Harms. Procedure-specific details requiring greater acupotomy-specific description were organized into five domains: targeting, access, layer, release and endpoint. We then applied these domains to a published randomized trial of ultrasound-guided acupotomy as a worked example. This organization is intended to make procedural variation explicit; it is not presented as a validated checklist or minimum reporting set. General intervention information remains covered by existing guidance. Harms reporting should reflect anatomical and procedural context, and outcome assessment should prioritize patient-important outcomes such as pain and region-appropriate function. Imaging used to guide the procedure should be reported according to its role, whereas imaging- or physiology-based outcome measures are better treated as exploratory or mechanistic when relevant. CONCLUSION: Clearer procedural reporting may make acupotomy studies easier to reproduce, compare and synthesize. The five domains are preliminary and require empirical testing and stakeholder input.