Rationale:
In the treatment of Stress Urinary Incontinence (SUI) conservative treatment is preferred. First choice option is pelvic floor muscle therapy (PFMT), which increases pelvic organ support by improving strength and coordination of the pelvic floor muscles (PFM)[1–4]. Although the effectiveness of PFMT has been determined by qualitative research, quantitative measurements are described very limitedly. Several measurement parameters are available allowing for such quantitative assessment and comparison between the techniques. Objective evaluation, and the establishment of a true gold standard (e.g. manual palpation, myofeedback, ultrasound) of muscle function will lead to better understanding of the effect of PFMT on the PFM and is a step towards the prediction of the effectivity of PFMT for each SUI patient individually. The muscle function can be quantified as strain, a measure derived from the deformation and shortening of a muscle, expressed as a percentage of the previous state of the muscle.
Objective:
The aim of this study is to evaluate whether the effect of PFMT on pelvic floor muscle strength could be detected via ultrasonography strain measurements in patients with SUI.