Trigger Points and Classical Acupuncture Points Part 3: Relationships of Myofascial Referred Pain Patterns to Acupuncture Meridians

Background: In the first part of this study, myofascial trigger point regions were demonstrated to have strong (93.3 %) anatomic correspondences with classical acupuncture points. The second portion of this study examined the clinical correspondences of trigger point regions and classical acupuncture points in the treatment of both pain and somatovisceral disorders, and found they had similar to 97 % correlation for treating pain conditions and over 93 % correlation in treating somatovisceral conditions. Objective: To examine the relationships of myofascial trigger point regions' referred-pain patterns to the meridian distributions of their anatomically corresponding classical acupuncture points. Methods: The 238 anatomically corresponding trigger point region - classical acupuncture point pairs in part one of this study were analyzed to compare the distributions of their myofascial referred-pain patterns and acupuncture meridians in order to determine if their distributions correlated. Results: Seventeen of the 238 anatomically corresponding trigger point regions had no described myofascial referredpain. In the remaining 221 trigger point region-classical acupuncture point pairs, 180 (81.5 %) demonstrated complete or near-complete correlation, and another 9.5 % of point pairs partially showed correlations regarding the distributions of their myofascial referred-pain patterns and associated acupuncture meridians. Only 9 % of point pairs showed little or no consistency of their referred-pain patterns and acupuncture meridians. Conclusions: The strong (up to 91 %) consistency of the distributions of trigger point regions' referred pain patterns to acupuncture meridians provides a fourth line of evidence that trigger points most likely represent the same physiological phenomenon as acupuncture points in the treatment of pain disorders.