“As someone who understands the training of both the physical therapist profession and the acupuncture profession, it is my personal opinion that if physical therapists want to perform dry needling over trigger points, which coincides with acupuncture points 90 percent of the time, they need further training, the equivalent of at least what is required for an M.D.,” she said. “And they need to obtain the same credentials as we did.”

“Lee-Yuan, who teaches at New York College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, has several physical therapists in her acupuncture classes.

“When physical therapists contend that what they learned about the anatomy while in school is enough to be able to do dry needling, that is not a sound argument,” she said. “Once out of school, they forget 70 to 80 percent of the anatomy they did learn in school. How do I know this? Because many of the physical therapists who are in the acupuncture classes I teach get the point locations wrong. So much for being an expert in anatomy.”