A dissertation proposal presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Master's Degree in Technology: Chiropractic, Technikon Natal, 2002. / Lateral epicondylitis is a relatively common disorder affecting approximately one third of the nearly thirty-two million tennis players worldwide. It usually presents as a chronic disorder that follows a remitting relapsing course, and as such represents a challenge to manage. At present the scientific literature does not favour any particular treatment modality and as such well designed placebo studies are required to assess the efficacy of the various modalities of treatment, with a long term view of establishing an effective treatment protocol to manage lateral epicondylitis. The purpose of this study was to determine the efficacy of dry needling the posterior distal muscles of the upper extremity as a treatment for lateral epicondylitis. Sixty patients were included in the study. They all under went a case history, physical examination and an elbow regional examination. They were then randomly allocated into the experimental or control groups. The thirty patients in the experimental group received dry needling while the thirty included in the control group received placebo or 'sham' needling. All participants in the study received three treatments over a nine-day period with subjective and objective measurements being taken before the 1st. 2nd, and 3rd treatments, with a 4th being taken after the third treatment. Examination of the statistical data revealed that a significant improvement in the experimental group versus the control group in terms of both subjective / M
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:dut/oai:ir.dut.ac.za:10321/1802 |
| Date | January 2002 |
| Creators | Haswell, Garrick David |
| Contributors | White, Horace Lindsay |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 90 p |
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