Avaliação da consciência da musculatura do assoalho pélvico e sua relação com a incontinência urinária em idosas

Abstract

Urinary incontinence (UI) in women affects millions of people of different ages, especially aged. This aimed to prove the relationship between body awareness of pelvic floor muscle (PFM) and the result of digital palpation of bi vaginal canal in elderly women. If it characterized by being a cross-sectional descriptive study, divided into two phases. First the development of an assessment tool of self perception of body awareness of pelvic floor muscles and the second application of the instrument, along with a bidigital evaluation of the vaginal canal, evaluation urogynecological, King's Health Questionnaire, Mini-Mental state examination (MEEM). It was applied to 99 elderly women, divided into two groups: Group Continence and Incontinence Group. For statistical analysis the scores of body awareness were created and their averages were calculated for the continent and incontinent groups, adjusted by age, socioeconomic status, pregnancies, etc. Means were tested by the Student t test. Data were analyzed using EPI INFO 7.1.3 program. 99 elderly women were evaluated with a mean age of 67.94 (± 1.14) years, 49 (49%) declared continents and 50 (51%) declared incontinent. There was a positive relationship between MAP and self perception of the strength of the pelvic floor among incontinent women (p <0.001). However, an inverse relationship was observed between continents women who had lower scores self perception of MAP with increasing force. These results show a better self perception of PFM of incontinent regarding continents.