Impact of episiotomy on pelvic floor disorders and their influence on women's wellness after the sixth month postpartum: a retrospective study

BMC Women's Health

Research Article

Diego Marchesoni¹  Lorenza Driul¹  Ambrogio P Londero¹  Angelo Calcagno¹  Serena Bertozzi²  Paolo Di Benedetto³  Cristina Delneri³  Arrigo Fruscalzo⁴ 

[1] Clinic of Obstetrics and Gynecology, AOU "SM della Misericordia" of Udine, 33100, Udine, Italy;Clinic of Surgical Semeiotics, AOU "SM della Misericordia" of Udine, 33100, Udine, Italy;Dipartimento di Medicina Riabilitativa, servizo di Diagnosi e Riabilitazione Perineale, Istituto di Medicina Fisica e Riabilitazione Gervasutta, 33100, Udine, Italy;Frauenklinik, Mathias-Spital, Frankenburgstr. 31, 48431, Rheine, Germany;

关键词: episiotomy;    vaginal delivery;    pelvic floor disorders;    perineum;    psycho-physical health;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6874-11-12

 received in 2010-08-23, accepted in 2011-04-18,  发布年份 2011

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe role of episiotomy as a protective factor against pelvic floor disorders postpartum has been debated for many years, but its routine use has been hitherto discouraged in the literature. Comparisons between restrictive and routine use of episiotomy in existent literature, however, fail to include any consideration relating to quality of life. The aim of this study, therefore, is to state the role of episiotomy in preserving the perineum from damage, in order to prevent the influence of pelvic floor disorders on women's psycho-physical wellness after the sixth month postpartum.MethodsA follow-up telephone interview was performed among 377 primiparous and secondiparous Caucasian women who had a child by spontaneous or operative vaginal delivery in 2006 using a self-created questionnaire and King's Health Questionnaire (KHQ).ResultsThe mean age at delivery was 35.26 (±4.68) years and episiotomy was performed in 59.2% of women. Multivariate linear regression shows episiotomy associated to higher quality of life after the sixth month postpartum by correlating with inferior values of King's Health Questionnaire (p < 0.05).ConclusionsEpisiotomy appears to be a protective factor for women's wellness. Women who had episiotomy and who experienced perineal symptoms have a better psycho-physical health status in the 12.79 months (±3.3) follow-up.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Bertozzi et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011. 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/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.