COMPARATIVE EFFECT OF DRY NEEDLING AND NEURAL MOBILISATION ON PAIN, STRENGTH AND QUALITY OF LIFE IN PATIENTS WITH LATERAL EPICONDYLITIS: TWO GROUP PRETEST POSTEST DESIGN

Background: - Lateral Epicondylitis is the most prevalent condition of the elbow which causes pain over the lateral aspect of the elbow and weakness in grip strength. This study is planned to investigate between Dry Needling and Neural Mobilization technique and its effectiveness in the management of lateral epicondylitis. Purpose: - The purpose of this study was aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of the comparative effect of Dry Needling and Neural Mobilization in order to treat lateral epicondylitis. Material and methods: - Participants with lateral epicondylitis within age group between 35-54 years having Cozen test and ULTT2b positive will be included in the study .Participants were recruited by purposive sampling method and were allotted into Group 1 and Group2 randomly. Group1 received Dry Needling with Conventional therapy and Group2 received Neural Mobilization with Conventional therapy . The intervention was given on alternate days for a period of 2 weeks. Pre and post treatment outcome were assessed with PRTEE Questionnaire, Algometer, Hand held Dynamometer and Goniometer. Results: - Data analysis was done by Wilcoxon signed rank test /paired t-test for within group and Mann Whitney U-test/independent t-test for between groups. The significance level will be set at 0.05. All outcome measures showed highly significant results post 2-week intervention. Conclusion: Both the groups received the treatment hence both interventions provided positive effects to the participants with lateral epicondylitis. However, adding Dry Needling treatment technique to the previous conventional therapy further provided an improvement to the pain, grip strength, range of motion, and quality of life of the participants