Abstract

FERREIRA, Margarida  and  SANTOS, Paula Clara. Impact of exercise programs in woman's quality of life with stress urinary incontinence. Rev. Port. Sau. Pub. [online]. 2012, vol.30, n.1, pp.3-10. ISSN 0870-9025.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rpsp.2011.12.001.

Introduction: The urinary incontinence has implications in woman's quality of life comprising the physical, social, sexual and psychic spheres. Woman restricts or decreases her social or physical activities, with emotional effects, including low self-esteem, depression, shame and solitude. Objectives: Compare the efficacy between supervised pelvic floor exercise programs and home exercise programs with home pelvic floor exercise programs in women's quality of life with mild to moderate stress urinary incontinence. Material and methods: Randomized trial including a total of 34 women diagnosed with stress urinary incontinence after an urodynamic evaluation. Women were randomly placed in two groups. Both groups did a home exercise protocol for a total of six months. The supervised group of the pelvic floor exercise program added exercises once a week, during 45 minutes by physiotherapist. The Ditrovie scale was administered in quality of life assessment. In the assessment of the frequency of the urinary incontinence episodes a the record of the urinary losses during seven days was used. Results: The supervised pelvic floor exercise program group showed a significant percentage reduction of the frequency of the incontinence episodes in 60.2% and the home exercise program group in 43.4% (p<0.014). However, this decrease in the average variation of the incontinence episodes wasn’t significant between two groups (p=0.363). Globally, quality of life improved in both groups, but women from the supervised pelvic floor exercise program group improved more than women from the home exercise program group, after six months of treatment (p=0.041). Women from supervised pelvic floor exercise program group significantly improved in daily life activities setting (36%; p=0.001), emotional setting (34,6%; p=0.002), sleep (30,8%; p=0.015) and well-being (40,6%; p=0.001). In this study we verified a positive correlation (p=0.043, r=0.349) between the quality of life and the frequency of the urinary incontinence episodes. Conclusion: Both exercise programs improved the global perception of health and quality of life in women's health with stress urinary incontinence.

Keywords : Stress Urinary Incontinence; Exercise Programs; Pelvic Floor Muscle; Physiotherapy; Quality of Life Scale.

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