Opposed to dry needling by physical therapist without a license in acupuncture

I - Please contribute to strengthen the quality assurance, safety, proper use and effectiveness of Dry needling/acupuncture.

In regards of safety :

1- Adverse events : Dry needling/acupuncture is an invasive technique that should only be used by trained and licensed acupuncturist because of risk of pneumothorax, punctured organ, broken needle requiring surgery and aggravation of conditions. 

2-High standard of care through training : Acupuncturist gives the best quality care to the patient in dry needling/acupuncture due to the extensive training and post graduated class. We also have to be up-to-date in acupuncture scientific literature. Part of our training requires learning over 400 acupuncture points. We learn and are tested repeatedly in graduate school and on National Board Exams regarding point location, safe needling depth, safe needling angle, physical structures under the point, contraindications & risks, cautions such as "deep perpendicular or oblique insertion carries a substantial risk of causing a pneumothorax," several functions of the point, clinical applications, and combinations that can be used with other points. We practice needling through layers of tissue to develop the sense of touch, then we practice needling on ourselves  and then on our collegues. After that, we have one year of supervised training (in Canada) before treating our patients. It takes years to learn how and where you can needle safely without risk of harming your patients. This is not something that can be learned in 54 hours. Underqualified physical therapists treating with dry needling/acupuncture is prejudiciable to the patient, to the acupuncture profession and to the physiotherapy profession.

3-Ensure consumers of acupuncture to make informed choices about self-health care. It creates confusion for the consumers when dry needling/acupuncture is done by underqualified professionals.  Interdisciplinary collaborative practice between conventional medicine practitioners such as physiotherapists and acupuncture practitioners with a people-centred emphasis is the best care for the patients.
 The practice of 'dry needling' creates confusion among physical therapists. PT disagree that acupuncture is dry needling but paradoxically, cite many acupuncture references and suggest that ignoring randomized clinical acupuncture trials would limit the ability to optimally use dry needling in clinical practice.

4- Prejudice to the acupuncture profession. Physical therapists are claiming that they don’t use traditional chinese medicine (TCM) basis philosophy in order to treat patient with 'dry needling'. Even though it contains the word ‘traditional’, it is misleading since the word seem to oppose ‘modern’ evidence-based medicine. Acupuncture is being explained by modern science in regards of the therapeutic mechanisms. TCM use evidence-based medicine to test its efficiency and limitations in treating many ailments. Acupuncturist’s education is a combination of Western and Chinese medicine.

While acupuncturist supports innovation, when a physical therapist is doing research in dry needling/acupuncture, it can be abused to misappropriate acupuncture techniques or protocoles. On american social media, we now see an emergence of acupuncture treatment done by physical therapist claiming that it’s dry needling (example: needles being inserted on face and hands to treat sinus conditions).

II    Dry needling is not “manual therapy;” it is acupuncture. Physical therapy can use manual therapy to release trigger points with great result. Dry needling/Acupuncture is not a tool, it's an effective way to stimulate acupuncture points. Acupuncture is the practice of medicine. Acupuncture points carry a therapeutic effect. This knowledge is out of scope of practice for physical therapy. 

Trigger points are ashi points.
“Dry needling” was first described over 2,000 years ago in China’s comprehensive medical treatise, the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic (Huangdi Neijing). It discusses in detail using tender or painful points, located in muscles and connective tissues, also known as “trigger points” to treat pain and dysfunction of the neuromusculoskeletal system. Simply described, “dry needling” involves inserting an acupuncture needle into a tender or painful point and then appropriately manipulating (rotating and/or pistoning) it for therapeutic purposes.
This was, in fact, one of acupuncture’s earliest forms of point selection. China’s preeminent physician, Sun Si-Miao (581–682 C.E.), called these tender or painful points “ashi” points. In Chinese, ashi means Ah yes! (That’s the spot that is painfull).  Incidentally, researches have established that up to 93% of trigger point [reported in the Western medical literature] has a corresponding acupuncture points. clearly such techniques as 'dry needling' are part of acupuncture’s scope of practice. 

"The term ‘acupuncture’ is a translation of ??? (zhen ci shu in Chinese pin yin) or in short ? (zhen), and is literally equivalent to the term ‘needling’ or ‘needling technique’. Dry needling literally is acupuncture, although the term is more commonly used instead of acupuncture by physiotherapists in Western countries. 

Historically, dry needling is acupuncture. In China, especially in the East, the term dry needling (??, gan zhen in Chinese pin yin) has been a folk name for acupuncture since Western medicine arrived in China in the late 1800s, when the term of dry needling was created in order to differentiate it from the needles used for injections by Western trained doctors. Many people in China still refer to acupuncture as dry needling, especially after acupuncture point injection therapy and aquapuncture therapy were developed in China in the early 1950s. The term dry needling (gan zhen) has already become a synonym for acupuncture used by many Chinese practitioners. For example, when searching using the Chinese term ?? in the Amazon book department, all results are acupuncture books." *see the article published in BMJ, written by Arthur Yin Fan and Hongjian He http://aim.bmj.com/content/early/2015/12/15/acupmed-2015-011010.long

American MDs practicing medical acupuncture have come out against the practice of dry needling by PTs in a recent statement by the American Academy of Medical Acupuncture : http://www.medicalacupuncture.org/ForPhysicians/AbouttheAAMA/AAMAPositionStatement.aspx.