A Comparison of Effectiveness of Thai Traditional Massage and Tamsulosin in Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms: A Randomized Controlled Trial

The prospective clinical, non-inferiority study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of Thai traditional massage on lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) compared with Tamsulosin in Thai men. It was conducted on men aged 50 to 75 years old with LUTS (N = 45). Participants were blocked four randomly assigned into 2 groups. The control group (n = 25) was received 0.4 mg Tamsulosin daily and the study group (n = 20) was given Thai traditional massage for 4 weeks. The efficacy evaluation was performed by the International Prostate Symptoms Score (IPSS), a Thai version of the World Health Organization Quality of Life Questionnaire (WHO-QoL Brief), Uroflowmetry, and Post-void residual urine (PVR) at baseline and end of study. The background characteristics of participants were not significantly different between groups. Both interventions relieved LUTS in the total IPSS and the quality of life score associated with urination were decreased, described as symptoms and quality of life due to urination improvement after 4 weeks of intervention. Interestingly, the Thai traditional massage has significant improvement in total IPSS and voiding score (p < .05). Additionally, the time to peak flow rate, peak flow rate (Qmax), average flow rate (Qave) and voided volume of both interventions were improved with no statistical significance. PVR was decreased in both interventions. The WHO-QoL brief score was improved the total score. There was no significant difference in terms of uroflowmetry, PVR, and WHO-QoL brief scores compared between groups. The result suggests that Thai traditional massage has the potential to be an alternative treatment for LUTS.