Work-related Musculoskeletal Disorders can cause neck and shoulder pain in office workers. The research objective was to investigate the efficacy of Ruesi Dadton exercise (RD) and Yoga exercise (YE) compared with Stretching exercise (SE) on reducing neck and shoulder pain in office workers. A single-blind randomized controlled trial was conducted at Thai Traditional Health Promotion Center, Thai Traditional and Alternative Medicine Hospital. A total number of 80 participants, equally divided into three groups: two intervention groups of RD (n=26), YE (n=28), and a control group of stretching exercise (SE) (n=26) who completed the 4-week intervention program. The primary outcomes were pain relief assessed by Visual Analog Scale, Pressure Pain Threshold, muscle flexibility by Cervical Range of Motion. The secondary outcome was World Health Organization's Quality of Life test. ANOVA, paired t-tests and repeated ANOVA were used to analyze the data. The results showed that the comparison of all three groups before and after the exercises revealed a decrease in pain, better tolerance to pain and more flexibility of the neck muscles with statistical significance (p< 0.05). With respect to the quality of World Health Organization's Quality of Life, the comparison of all four domains in all three groups before and after the exercises indicated a statistically significant improvement in quality of life (p< 0.05). However, there were no differences in pain, neck muscle flexibility and quality of life between groups.
Keywords: Stretching exercise; flexibility; musculoskeletal disorders; quality of life.