Background: The quality of life of patients with Myofascial pain syndrome (MPS) in the upper and middle trapezius treated with the court-type traditional Thai massage and topical diclofenac was studied.

Methods: A randomized controlled clinical trial was performed in 90 MPS patients. The SF-36 health survey was employed to assess the quality of life of both groups of patients. The visual analog scale (VAS) was also used to determine their levels of pain severity.

Results: There was no statistically significant difference between the two groups at baseline in terms of age (41.22 vs 41.00 years), height 156.58 vs 156.98 cm), weight (56.82 vs 59.27 kg) and pain periods (8.22 vs 6.84 months) (p<0.222). The physical component summary (PCS) and the mental component summary (MCS) scores before and after treating the patients with the court-type traditional Thai massage and topical diclofenac indicated significant improvement for both treatment group and the control group .The treatment group, PCS and MCS scores increased significantly from 47.52 to 68.00 and from 40.78 to 66.34 (p = 0.001 and 0.001). For the control group, PCS and MCS scores went up from 56.70 to 59.60 and from 40.51 to 50.60 (p = 0.007 and 0.002).The VAS means scores before and after the treatments indicated a statistically significant decline for both groups (p-values < 0.001).

Conclusions: It can be concluded, that both types of treatment have positive therapeutic effects on the quality of life scores of patients with MPS in the upper and middle trapezius. The results also point to the superiority (quality of life SF-36) of CTTM over topical diclofenac.