The Effectiveness of Court-type Thai Traditional Massage for Relieving Tension-type Headache

Abstract

Rationale and Objective: The most common type of chronic headache is tension-type headache. Drugs used for relieving such headache or pain always have side effects on the kidney and liver. Therefore, court-type Thai traditional massage is one of the choices for relieving the pain. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of Thai traditional massage in addition to a standard management procedure for relieving tension-type headache compared with the standard management alone. Methodology: One hundred and four patients who had been diagnosed with tension-type headache participated in the study. They were divided into two groups by random allocation allowing 52 patients per group. The study group was treated with court-type Thai traditional massage in addition to standard management whereas the control group was treated with the standard management alone. During the treatment for four weeks, all patients were assessed on perceived pain using the numeric rating scale, frequency of pain, amount of medication used for relieving pain, and patient satisfaction with treatment. Results: After treatment, the pain intensities in the control and study groups were 2.24±0.50 and 1.08±0.27, respectively (P = 0.05). The percentages of the patients who had reduced pain intensity ≥50% for the control and study groups were 59.62% and 92.31%, respectively (P = 0.001). The differences of the median of frequency of the pain within the groups were 25 and 15 per month in the control and study groups, respectively (P = 0.01). Discussion and Conclusion: We conclude that court-type Thai traditional massage in addition to standard management can relieve headache intensity, and the frequency of pain is better than using the standard management alone for this patient population.