He C, et al. – The effectiveness of myofascial trigger points (MTrPs) needling was assessed in patients with plantar heel pain in this meta–analysis. Because of plantar fasciitis, MTrP needling effectively reduced the heel pain. However, more large–scale, adequately powered, good–quality placebo–controlled trials were needed to provide more trustworthy evidence in this area considering the potential limitations in this study.

• The clinicians systematically reviewed PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, SinoMed (Chinese BioMedical Literature Service System, People’s Republic of China), and CNKI (National Knowledge Infrastructure, People’s Republic of China) databases for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that evaluated the effects of MTrP needling.
• They calculated pooled weighted mean difference (WMD) with 95% CIs for change in visual analog scale (VAS) score.
• Pooled risk ratio (RR) with 95% CIs were calculated for success rate for pain and incidence of adverse events.
• They used a fixed-effects model or random-effects model to pool the estimates, depending on the heterogeneity among the included studies.

• The clinicians yielded 1,941 articles.
• Out of which, only 7 RCTs met the inclusion criteria and were included in this meta-analysis.
• The pooled results demonstrated that compared with control, MTrP needling significantly reduced the VAS score (WMD =-15.50, 95% CI: -19.48, -11.53; P<0.001).
• However, it had a similar success rate for pain with control (risk ratio [RR] =1.15, 95% CI: 0.87, 1.51; P=0.320).
• Furthermore, MTrP needling was correlated with a similar incidence of adverse events with control (RR =1.89, 95% CI: 0.38, 9.39; P=0.438).