Determining the effects of pelvic floor exercises in urinary incontinence treatment on pelvic floor muscle strength by non-invasive method

Objective: To understand whether the effects of pelvic floor exercises in urinary incontinence treatment on pelvic floor muscle strength by non-invasive method could be determined or not.Method: 64 volunteer diagnosed with urinary incontinence were included to the study as 33 of them exercises group and 31 control. Subjects randomly divided into two groups. First group received pelvic floor exercises for 12 weeks, second group formed as a control group as they did not receive any intervention. Both groups were assessed by body mass index, waist to hip ratio, transabdominal ultrasound measurement, strength evaluation with PERFECT, stop test, stress test and pad test initially and at the end of 12 weeks. t test for dependent group was used for statistical analysis of before and after exercises, differences between groups was analyzed by t test for independent groups.Results: Exercise group subjects has mean age of 51.9±10,06 where control group has 48,06±5,14. There was a statistically meaningful increase in values of transabdominal transvers USG and transabdominal longitudinal USG of the exercises group between before and after exercises (p=0.00). Transabdominal transvers USG and transabdominal longitudinal USG values of the control group had no significant changes between before and after 12 weeks. The PERFECT strength values of subjects in exercise group and control group increased with USG strength measurement values both before and after exercises (p=0.00, r=0,631, p=0.00, r=0.644).Conclusion: The results of our study showed improvement in pelvic floor muscle with pelvic floor muscle training which shows compatibility with the corresponding literature. Our study showed that in treatment results evaluation improvement in muscle strength could be determined by a non-invasive method as ultrasonography.Key Words: Pelvic floor exercises, PERFECT