Pelvic Floor Muscle Exercises for Stress Urinary Incontinence (SUI): A Review Article

Abstract

Introduction: The International Continence Society (ICS) describes Urinary incontinence (UI) as the complaint of involuntary leakage of urine and proposes a classification according to the existence of signs and symptoms and mechanisms of occurrence [1, 2]. Purpose: The purpose of this review is to find existing evidence based intervention for Stress Urinary Incontinence (SUI) among women. A preliminary search on Cochrane database, PUBMED, EMBASE, SCOPUS & CINHAL done by the researcher and found relevant studies which provided strong evidence to support role of Pelvic Floor Muscle Exercises (PFME) or Pelvic Floor Muscle Training (PFMT) in reducing symptoms among women diagnosed with SUI. Conclusion: The review concluded that PFMT is a feasible and patient friendly exercise program used for treating SUI with high quality evidence and to be followed under supervision of a health professional. It is also found that less number of recent studies hence suggest having long term studies in future.