Comparative study on efficacy of physiotherapy and physiotherapy combined with Thai massage on rehabilitation outcome and quality of life of ischemic stroke patients with hemiplegia

Introduction: Thai massage is the wisdom of people treated for disease prevention, health promotion, rehabilitation and helps to reduce individual’s stress levels improves overall circulation of patients but their relative effectiveness of Thai massage on rehabilitation outcome of ischemic stroke patients in comparison to only physiotherapy, standard treatment, has not been established. The objective of this study aimed to compare the efficacy of physiotherapy (PT) and physiotherapy combined with Thai massage (PTTM) on rehabilitation outcome and quality of life of ischemic stroke patients. Method: A quasi-experimental clinical research study was designed. Sixty eight volunteers participated and were divided into two groups. The subjects were allocated to the control group (34 subjects) receiving the physical rehabilitation with physiotherapy or the treatment group (34 subjects) receiving the physiotherapy combined with Thai massage 11 times. All subjects received a follow up on the day 0, day 15th and day 30th of the months. The effectiveness of treatment was evaluated by skill evaluation in activities of daily living (Modified Barthel Index (MBI), the Fugl-Meyer Assessment of Physical Performance evaluation and quality of life questionnaire SF-36 version update, Thailand, year 2005, and the mean differences in those scores were compared between groups by using repeated measures ANOVA. Result: The physiotherapy combined with Thai massage revealed significant difference when compared with only physiotherapy; the basic activities of daily living (PT = 65.29 ± 16.10, PTTM = 74.62 ± 18.27), the functions of the upper limbs (PT = 28.71 ± 8.60, PTTM = 40.32 ± 9.91), upper and lower extremity sensation (PT = 19.12 ± 3.86, PTTM = 21.00 ± 2.20), range of motion of joints (PT = 27.00 ± 7.32, PTTM = 30.44 ± 3.88) and joint pain (PT = 33.26 ± 5.54, PTTM = 38.71 ± 5.18) For the work of the lower limbs (PT = 21.47 ± 4.90, PTTM = 20.76 ± 5.07) and balance (PT = 8.45 ± 2.45, PTTM = 7.53 ± 2.51), there were no significant differences between two groups. The evaluation of the SF-36 showed that the group with physiotherapy combined with Thai massage the quality of life of patients was improved significantly. (PT = 107.32 ± 9.32, PTTM = 112.15 ± 5.89) Discussion and Conclusion: The physiotherapy combined with Thai massage showed the effectiveness in rehabilitation outcome and the quality of life was better than ischemic stroke patients who got rehabilitation with only physiotherapy when the patients got a