Effectiveness of pelvic floor muscle training along with conventional physiotherapy for female stroke patients with urinary incontinence

Abstract

Background: Stroke is a condition that causes damaged to the brain either blockage in the blood vessels or rupture of the blood vessels. More than one-third of stroke patients admit to hospitals experience urinary incontinence (UI). Objectives: To find out the effectiveness of pelvic floor muscle training for female stroke patients with urinary incontinence. Methodology: Experimental study design was used in this study. 30 female patients with stroke were randomly assigned into two groups among them 15 patients were assigned into experimental group received Pelvic floor muscle training with conventional physiotherapy and another 15 into control group received only conventional physiotherapy. Total treatment sessions were twelve comprising of 3 sessions per week for 4 weeks. Outcome measurement tools: Bristol Female Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms (BFLUTS) questionnaire has been used to measure urinary symptoms and quality of life. Analysis of data: A descriptive analysis has been done. Also, inferential statistics such as paired t test, and unpaired t test was done for BFLUTS-FS, BFLUTS-VS, BFLUTS-IS, BFLUTS-QoL, by using SPSS version 25. Results: Both the experimental and control groups demonstrated improvement across multiple domains assessed by the BFLUTS questionnaire. For the BFLUTS-FS, BFLUTS-IS, and BFLUTS-QoL sections, the experimental group showed significantly greater improvement than the control group, suggesting that pelvic floor muscle training combined with conventional physiotherapy is more effective in enhancing these specific aspects of urinary function and quality of life in female stroke patients. However, in the case of the BFLUTS-VS section, in between group analysis no group could be able to bring superior effect in the experimental group and control group. But clinically there is difference, experimental group treatment has little superior effect than control group but statistically the improvement was not significant. Conclusion: These results showed statistically significant value on BFLUTS-FS, BFLUTS-IS and BFLUTS-QoL, but there was a mean difference in BFLUTS-VS, which indicate that Pelvic floor muscle training with conventional physiotherapy an effective therapeutic approach for female stroke patients with urinary incontinence. Keywords: Bristol Female Urinary Tract Symptoms, stroke, urinary incontinence, Pelvic Floor Muscle Training, Conventional physiotherapy.