Are traditional Thai therapies better than conventional treatment for stroke rehabilitation? A quasi-experimental study

IntroductionWorldwide, stroke is the principal cause of adult disability and second leading cause of death. Traditional and complementary therapies such as yoga, tai chi, massage and herbal therapies are widely used to treat a variety of illnesses in developing countries and recent research has shown that they may be of some benefit in stroke rehabilitation.MethodsA quasi-experimental controlled before-and-after study that recruited 40 stroke patients from Thung Bo Paen rehabilitation centre (treatment group) and Lampang hospital (control group), located in Northern Thailand. Measures included activities of daily living (ADLs), involving Barthel Index scores, and pain, emotion and sleep scores.ResultsThere was a statistically significant difference between the changes in Barthel Index scores in patients from the two treatment locations, where patients from Thung Bo Paen showed greater improvement compared to patients from Lampang hospital (p = 0.020). However, there were no significant differences between the changes in pain scores (p = 0.492), emotion scores (p = 0.671) or sleep scores (p = 0.197) in patients from the two treatment locations.ConclusionsPatients receiving traditional Thai therapies had significant improvements in ADLs at 3 months compared to conventional treatments. Future research on the use of traditional Thai therapies for stroke recovery should be conducted using a RCT, to avoid biases such as the differences in baseline measures, and should also contain an evaluation of cost, because if both approaches are shown to be equivalent, the next issue to be addressed is which approach is more cost effective.