Identifying which adverse events associated with dry needling should be included for informed consent: A modified...

Area of Science:

• Physical Therapy
• Pain Management
• Clinical Practice Guidelines

Background:

• Dry needling (DN) is a therapeutic modality utilizing monofilament needles for pain reduction.
• Adverse events (AEs) are associated with DN due to its invasive nature.
• Standardized risk statements for informed consent (IC) in DN are lacking.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify specific adverse events (AEs) for inclusion in dry needling (DN) informed consent (IC) risk statements.
• To establish consensus among experts on essential AEs for patient disclosure.

Main Methods:

• A three-round electronic Delphi (e-Delphi) study was conducted with dry needling (DN) experts.
• Expert consensus was defined by specific agreement thresholds and statistical measures.
• Participants rated their agreement on a 4-point Likert scale.

Main Results:

• Fourteen adverse events (AEs) achieved final consensus for inclusion in informed consent (IC) risk statements.
• Expert agreement improved throughout the e-Delphi process (Kendall's w: 0.213 to 0.349).
• Statistically significant changes were observed for 12 of 50 evaluated AEs.

Conclusions:

• Consensus was reached on 14 adverse events (AEs) for dry needling (DN) informed consent (IC).
• The identified AEs facilitate the development of concise and informative IC risk statements.
• High expert agreement (93.6%) was achieved on AE classification definitions.