This study aimed to compare the effectiveness of a hybrid telerehabilitation program with a traditional face to face model in women with stress urinary incontinence (SUI) and mixed incontinence (MUI) with a predominance of SUI. The authors hypothesized that home pelvic floor muscle training (PFMT) would have a similar benefit to outpatient PFMT.
Parallel randomized controlled trial including 58 patients consecutively admitted to a tertiary academic hospital for pelvic floor rehabilitation consultation from 1 January to 30 April 2021 for conservative treatment of UI. Participants randomized to the intervention were submitted to a 12-week PFMT program: (1) a hybrid telerehabilitation program of two individual face-to-face sessions followed by 2-weekly sessions of video-telerehabilitation with a follow-up by a specialized physiotherapist, including one individual face-to-face session at 8 weeks; (2) a re-evaluation teleconsultation at 6 and 16 weeks; (3) a face-to-face consultation at 12 weeks. The control group had two initial individual sessions followed by twice-weekly group classes, and consultations were face to face. The primary outcome measure (at baseline and 12 weeks) was UI-related quality of life using the Portuguese Version of the King's Health Questionnaire.
At baseline the intervention (n = 18) and control (n = 17) groups were similar. UI-related quality of life significantly improved in both the intervention and control groups betweenbaseline (T0) and the end of the 12-week PFMT program (T12) (p = 0.002, p < 0.001, respectively), although the magnitude of the improvement was not significantly different between groups (-10.0 vs. -9.5 points, p = 0.918, respectively).
This hybrid telerehabilitation protocol showed effectiveness comparable to the traditional model in improving UI-related quality of life. Trial registration at www.
gov , no. NCT05114395.
International urogynecology journal. 2022 May 21 [Epub ahead of print]
Mariana Santiago, Pedro Cardoso-Teixeira, Sofia Pereira, João Firmino-Machado, Susana Moreira
Serviço de Medicina Física e de Reabilitação, Centro Hospitalar Universitário de São João, Porto, Portugal. ., Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal., Serviço de Medicina Física e de Reabilitação, Centro Hospitalar Universitário de São João, Porto, Portugal., EPIUnit - Instituto de Saúde Pública, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal.