News is reporting that JJ Watt had to have emergency surgery to repair a collapsed lung that was cause by dry needling.
As a recipient of frequent dry needling that sounds pretty wild. Did they insert the needle in his chest way too far?
Did the electric pulses cause the issue?

It’s not JJ. JJ is retired. It’s his brother TJ, still playing with the Steelers. I was making a comment on a news website about this last night. How can it (a pneumothorax) happen with dry needling, especially on an athlete with thick muscles all over. Maybe the needler slipped and lurched forward and *OOPS!*. Must have been a small pneumothorax, because he went home after just two days hospitalization.

BTW, for those who don’t know (I didn’t), dry needling basically involves inserting a thin solid needle (think acupuncture) into a tight muscle to relax and relieve the spasm.

Trigger point therapy…

Had it a while back for a psoas muscle issue.

NEVER AGAIN

^^^^^^^^^^
Why never again???? It is a huge help for me and actually feels good during and almost gives me instant relief.

Did you have the dry needling where they use the needles and a little bit of current giving you essentially a direct muscle tens unit?


The reason I ask how is this possible is because I have super tough thick skin. My skin is so tough that many of the needles will actually bend prior going deep enough to be effective. Sometimes my Doctor even has to use a tiny little mallet thing to get them in enough.
My wife who is a nurse, who has given countless shots, IVs, blood draws, and she says she has never felt so much resistance in the skin than when she gives me my shot.

So I am curious how is this even possible???

quote:

So I am curious how is this even possible???

Well, it did happen. And all we can do out here is speculate as to how, since there is no more info than “he was undergoing dry needling treatment”. Someone could have slipped. They could have been using a thick large needle. They could have been doing a totally different procedure, without permission, that requires actual medication injection but went in too far and punctured the lung, then lied about doing dry needling. And don’t forget, a spontaneous pneumothorax is not at all uncommon. I’ve seen several such cases in my career. Small ones can self resolve. Larger ones require a chest tube.

Not really asking exactly what happened in this instance but more of what needs to happen in a more general idea.

Would the needle have to come in contact with the lung?

Think of the lung as a ballon constantly replenished with air. Anything that punctures it, be it a knife or a needle, will let air escape into the space between it and the chest cavity that supports it. As the person continues to breathe, every time he breathes in, air continues to leak into that space but has nowhere else to go. As more air continues to accumulate with each breath in and gets trapped in that space, it compresses/collapses the lung, a condition called pneumothorax. If the collapse is so great that it now presses on the heart, the heart will have a very difficult time to fill and pump blood normally. This situation is now a tension pneumothorax, a true medical emergency, and one needs to do immediate needle decompression to relieve that tension. If you’re alone and there is no help with that, you will die.

Needle decompression: Stick a large bore needle into the anterior chest wall about an inch and half midway and below the collar bone and leave it in place to let air escape from the chest cavity and the collapsed lung to expand and the compressed heart to regain its normal function. This is only a temporizing fix until definitive treatment is available.

quote:

Originally posted by Patriot:
Trigger point therapy…

Had it a while back for a psoas muscle issue.

NEVER AGAIN

Same here. It worked to relieve the pain but the treatments were so painful it wasn’t worth it since the relief never lasted me more than a couple days.

Had the psoas from too much Sriracha.


NEVER AGAIN, too.

^^^^^^^^^^^^
Interesting. What sort of pain did the treatment cause for you?
For me there was not really any pain. I would say discomfort. As the needles caused a bit of a sharp pain as they entered the skin. Getting a shot is worse.
There would be some times where I guess a particular needle would hit a nerve just right and cause my muscle to contract rather quickly, that would cause me to move in a direction that made my back muscle pain hurt worse until my body went back to where it was.
But man is it worth it.
My first time I was pretty freaked out because he pulled out the needle tray and said I am going to stick a few of these in your skin and leave them there for a bit.
By the end of the session I would be much more loose and have less pain, then the following day the issue was pretty much gone.
Very much worth it.
The pain would remind me that I needed to do my daily stretching and continue to work out my lower back.
I would feel good for awhile and quit stretching and targeting my lower back in my workouts.
Then I would go work on the car or move some furniture and be back there again.
I think it was the 3rd session when he added the electric current.

Apologies, it was a poor pun attempt at humor.

I believe that I will pass on being an electrified practice pin cushion!

I've had trigger point therapy numerous times and was constantly reminded to take shallow breaths as to minimize the risk of puncturing the lung.

It could have been malpractice, or an accidental spasm, cough, or movement by TJ. Only he and the practitioner know.