Prevalence and treatment of post partum urinary incontinence

Abstract

SUMMARYChildbirth is often considered the main etiological factor in the development of female urinary incontinence(UI). For that reason women in the western countries have been encouraged to engage in post partumpelvic floor muscle (PFM) exercise in order to strengthen the pelvic floor. However, the effect of post partumPFM exercise has been sparsely documented. The aim of this article is to review and discuss literaturerelated to prevalence of post partum UI and effect of post partum PFM exercise in the treatment of UI. Thereported prevalence of UI post partum varies from 0.7% to 44%. The variation may be explained bydifferent definitions of UI used in the questionnaires and that the registration of incontinence was done atdifferent intervals after delivery. A few studies have tried to evaluate the effect of post natal PFM exercise.Some have evaluated PFM strength, others the frequency of UI. PFM strength is difficult to measure andthe reliability and validity of the methods used is open to question. Another flaw in some of the previousstudies is the training protocol applied to improve PFM strength. Mørkved and Bø tried to take intoaccount the above mentioned methodological considerations, in a study aiming to evaluate the effect ofpost partum PFM exercise. The results demonstrate that post partum PFM exercise is effective instrengthening the PFM and in the treatment of UI. However, success of PFM exercise is dependent uponboth the training frequency and intensity. This requires a closer follow up of the post partum women, thanthe written information that usually serves this purpose at the present time.Key words  : physiotherapy, pelvic floor muscles, urinary incontinence, post partum exercise, prevalence