Effects of hypopressive gymnastics in urinary incontinence of adult women

Resumo

Introduction: Problems associated with pelvic floor and abdominal wall weakness muscles, are some dysfunctions like urinary incontinence (UI), which is the involuntary loss of urine and creates a functional, hygienic and social problema for women. The conservative treatment is usually the first line of treatment for UI highlighted by exercise. Hypopresive Method techniques created by Dr. Caufriez and based on postural and respiratory exercises are a possible option for therapeutic exercise in the prevention of pelvic and perineal pathologies like UI. Objective:. The main objective of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a program of hypopresive techniques and the training volumen in UI symptoms as well as anthropometric variables related to the pelvic floor in adult women. Methods: It was a quasi-experimental longitudinal study with a population of adult females (N=151, average age 45). The sample was randomly distributed into 3 groups; hypopressive group one day a week (G1D), hypopressive group twice a week (G2D) and a control group (GC). The intervention groups did hypopressive gymnastics during twelve weeks in thirty minute sessions of ten exercises. The UI symptoms and impact was evaluated using the ICIQ-SF questionnaire and Potenziani-2000. In addition, the waist-to-hip ratio, body mass index, and thoracic amplitude were analyzed. For the statistic analysis the covariance analysis in the parametric variables was used and for the non-parametric variables the Kruskal-Wallis and Mann Whitney tests were used. Results: There were significant differences between the two intervention groups (G1D and G2D) and the control group (GC) in UI symptom severity (p<0.01), impact of UI in quality of life (p<0.01), in hip-waist ratio and thoracic amplitude (p<0.01). The training did not show changes in body mass index (p>0.671) and between intervention groups. Conclusions: The results suggest that a twelve-week program of hypopressive gymnastics reduces the severity of UI symptoms, the impact it has on the quality of life, hip-waist ratio and the thoracic amplitude in a group of adult women. An hour of hypopressive gymnastics weekly does not seem to produce significantly different results in comparison to thirty minutes, in the studied variables in a sample of adult women.