OBJETIVOS

The importance of searching for, and when found to be present, deactivating MTrPs by one means or another (see Ch. 11) has been stressed by Filner (1989), Lin et al (1995) and Sola (1999).

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INTRODUCTION

Firstly in this chapter brief mention will be made of various pain-suppressing types of treatment employed by primitive man, whose analgesic effects, in retrospect, would seem to have been dependent on bringing into action similar neurophysiological mechanisms to those now believed to be involved in acupuncture.

Following this, current views concerning the mechanisms in the peripheral and central nervous systems considered to be brought into action when electroacupuncture and transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation are used for pain relief will be discussed.

Then, because in the next chapter the manually applied acupuncture technique known as super-ficial dry needling (SDN) will be advocated for the routine deactivation of primarily activated myo-fascial trigger points (MTrPs), and the technique known as deep dry needling (DDN) for the occa-sional case where the MTrP activity has arisen sec-ondarily to the development of a radiculopathy, it will be necessary to give a detailed account of the pain-relieving mechanisms believed to be brought into action by these two procedures.

Finally, reasons will be given as to why some of the current concepts concerning the manner in which manually applied needle-evoked nerve stimulation techniques bring about their pain-suppressing effects have recently had to be challenged.

9

Neurophysiological