Tuesday 22 December 2015

Vaginal Weight Cone versus Assisted Pelvic Floor Muscle Training in the Treatment of Female Urinary Incontinence

A randomized, single-blinded study is always a challenging task. The difficulties in our study were the recruitment and compliance of patients with the treatment and the long-term follow-up (12 months). We knew that the 24 h pad test was better than the 1 h test for the evaluation of the treatment of female urinary incontinence (UI), despite the fact that the latter had been approved by the International Continence Society. The 1 h pad test permitted us to standardize and ensure the quality of results.

After recruitment, some patients presented difficulties in perinea exercises due to the old habits of contracting the pelvic floor muscles (PFM) to maintain continence. These patients demanded the full support of a physiotherapist involved in this work.

The weekly meetings between the physiotherapist and patients proved to be important to improve the understanding of problems related to urinary incontinence (UI) and to encourage patients to make more comprehensive and stronger commitments to treatment.

It was pertinent to point out that the two different types of non-surgical management of UI increased the patients' motivation resulting in a significant and quick improvement in the symptoms of patients undergoing such treatments.

The weighted vaginal cone (WVC) proved to be efficient in strengthening the PFM fast, and might be recommended before the surgical approach to UI in order to maximize the results. The perinea exercises were also effective to treat UI showing its importance in maintaining the strength of female PFM.

Female urinary incontinence is better assisted when a motivated, sensitive multi-professional team is able to provide the best physic-psychological support. Clinical treatment of female UI is recommended less frequently than surgical procedure; therefore, further randomized trials are very important to evaluate the best options of clinical management of UI.

Resource: - http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/188230.php

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