Análise do tempo de resposta de contração dos músculos do assoalho pélvico provocado pela tosse entre mulheres continentes e com incontinência urinária de esforço

Abstract

Contextualization: Weakening of pelvic floor muscles (PMFs) has been considered a major cause of stress urinary incontinence (SUI). In this way, the physiotherapeutic treatment, classically, turned to the strengthening of these muscles. In this study it was hypothesized that, in addition to PMFs weakness, this dysfunction may also be related to a change in the pattern of reflex response of these muscles. Objective: The study objectives were to compare the contraction response time and strength of cough-induced PMFs among continents and SUI women, and to conduct a literature review on the use of biofeedback for pelvic floor muscle training in women with this dysfunction. Methods: Study II: A systematic review was conducted with a search of the databases Science Direct, Embase, MEDLINE, Pedro, SciELO, CINAHL and LILACS for randomized clinical trials that had biofeedback (BF) as a therapeutic tool for SUI. Study II: This was a cross-sectional study that evaluated the cough PMFs of 20 healthy women and 20 women with SUI. The clinical evaluation consisted of the application of questionnaires that assessed the severity of urinary incontinence and quality of life. Signal capture was performed with a 4-channel acquisition system (EMG System do Brasil Ltda®) to capture the signals obtained through vaginal dynamometry, electromyography (EMG) of the right external obliquus muscle and accelerometry. Statistical analysis was performed using the Shapiro-Wilk, independent t test or Mann-Whitney test according to the data distribution and the covariance analysis (ANCOVA) with post hoc Bonferrone test. The statistical significance considered for all tests was p <0.05. Results: Study I: the training of the PMFs with BF was not better than the control group (without training and orientation, vaginal electrical stimulation). However, these contradictory results and poor quality of the studies are probably not clinically significant. Study II: the contraction response of the PMFs was significantly different between the groups for the activation time of the PMFs (F = 19.51, P <0.0001, p2= 0.61), external oblique muscle activation time (F = 11.41, P <0.002, p2= 0.23) and time of the cough pulse (F = 4.21, P <0.04, p2= 0.10). Conclusion: The systematic review provides evidence that the training of BF-PMFs does not offer superior therapeutic benefits to other types of interventions in the treatment of female SUI. The cross-sectional study showed that women with SUI have delayed cough-induced contraction of PMFs.