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Is there any difference in pelvic floor muscles performance between continent and incontinent women?
Author(s) -
Burti Juliana Schulze,
Hacad Claudia R.,
Zambon João Paulo,
Polessi Emily Assis,
Almeida Fernando G.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
neurourology and urodynamics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.918
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1520-6777
pISSN - 0733-2467
DOI - 10.1002/nau.22613
Subject(s) - medicine , pelvic floor , perceived exertion , urinary incontinence , analysis of variance , physical therapy , electromyography , pelvic floor muscle , repeated measures design , exertion , heart rate , physical medicine and rehabilitation , surgery , blood pressure , statistics , mathematics
Aims To compare pelvic floor muscles (PFMs) performance in women with and without stress urinary incontinence (SUI) during endurance test. Methods It is a prospective case–control clinical trial. After determining PFM maximal voluntary contraction (MVC) by electromyography (EMG), women underwent endurance test, which consisted of consecutively PFM 1‐sec fast contractions reaching MVC amplitude followed by 1‐sec rest. Training time guided by Borg perceived exertion scale was noted. Heart rate (HR) behavior and EMG variables were assessed before and after training making a physiological analysis in both groups. Results A total of 56 women, mean age 52.19 years old, were evaluated (26 continent and 30 incontinent women). The time that SUI and continent women took to reach fatigue (Borg 10) was 9.1 ± 4.7 and 14.19 ± 8.32 min, respectively ( P = 0.006). Confirming that all women performed similar effort during the test, analysis of variance with repeated measures showed that during the endurance test both groups presented similar increase in HR, showing detectable and significant increase from resting time to Borg 10 ( P < 0.001). Besides, there was similar behavior in EMG for continent and SUI women, with a decrease from the baseline resting amplitude ( P = 0.003 for SUI women and P = 0.006 for continent women). Conclusions Women with SUI showed worse performance during an endurance test than continent women. It suggests that women have different capacity to perform PFM training. An initial evaluation based on PFM performance would help to define the best individualized PFM training. Neurourol. Urodynam. 34:544–548, 2015 . © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.