Reliability of pelvic floor muscle strength assessment in healthy continent women

BMC Urology

Research Article

Monica O Gameiro¹  Carlos R Padovani²  Dulcegleika VB Sartori³  Hamilto A Yamamoto³  Paulo R Kawano³  Rodrigo Guerra³  João L Amaro⁴ 

[1] Coordinator of Pelvic Floor Rehabilitation Service, Medical School of Botucat, São Paulo State University, Botucatu, Brazil;Department of Biostatistics, Medical School of Botucatu, São Paulo State University, Botucatu, Brazil;Department of Urology, Medical School of Botucatu, São Paulo State University, Botucatu, Brazil;Department of Urology, Medical School of Botucatu, São Paulo State University, Botucatu, Brazil;Department of Urology, School of Medicine, São Paulo State University (UNESP), Campus de Rubião Júnior, s/n, 18618-970, Botucatu, SP, Brazil;

关键词: Gynecological examination;    Parity;    Pelvic floor;    Urinary Incontinence;    Reproducibility of results;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12894-015-0017-6

 received in 2014-10-13, accepted in 2015-03-11,  发布年份 2015

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe aim of this study was to compare pelvic floor muscle (PFM) strength using transvaginal digital palpation in healthy continent women in different age groups, and to compare the inter- and intra-rater reliability of examiners performing anterior and posterior vaginal assessments.MethodsWe prospectively studied 150 healthy multiparous women. They were distributed into four different groups, according to age range: G1 (n = 37), 30–40 years-old; G2 (n = 39), 41–50 years-old; G3 (n = 39), 51–60 years-old; and G4 (n = 35), older than 60 years-old. PFM strength was evaluated using transvaginal digital palpation in the anterior and posterior areas, by 3 different examiners, and graded using a 5-point Amaro’s scale.ResultsThere was no statistical difference among the different age ranges, for each grade of PFM strength. There was good intra-rater concordance between anterior and posterior PFM assessment, being 64.7%, 63.3%, and 66.7% for examiners A, B, and C, respectively. The intra-rater concordance level was good for each examiner. However, the inter-rater reliability for two examiners varied from moderate to good.ConclusionsAge has no effect on PFM strength profiles, in multiparous continent women. There is good concordance between anterior and posterior vaginal PFM strength assessments, but only moderate to good inter-rater reliability of the measurements between two examiners.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Sartori et al.; licensee BioMed Central. 2015. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.