After pelvic floor training, more than half of women with stress incontinence said the leaking had stopped
You sneeze, you laugh, you run for the bus, and a little leaks out. There's a name for it: stress urinary incontinence. Cochrane describes it as leaking that's hard, sometimes impossible, to control during physical effort: a cough, a sneeze, sport, a sudden change of position.
In 2018 Chantale Dumoulin of the University of Montreal and her colleagues pooled 31 trials covering 1,817 women in 14 countries. They compared pelvic floor muscle training, an exercise programme for the strength and endurance of those muscles, with no treatment or a sham. By the end of training, 56% of women with stress incontinence in the exercise groups said their leaking had gone. In the control groups, 6% did.
The authors rated that finding as high-certainty, though it rests on only 4 trials and 165 women. Most of the other evidence was rated moderate. Programmes varied widely, and most trials followed women for less than a year, so we don't yet know how well the results hold up over time.
Side effects were rare, and minor where they were reported. The authors suggest training could be part of the first, non-surgical step in treatment. These muscles train like any others.
Sources
- Dumoulin C, Cacciari LP, Hay-Smith EJC. Pelvic floor muscle training versus no treatment, or inactive control treatments, for urinary incontinence in women. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2018; Issue 10: CD005654. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD005654.pub4