TY - JOUR
T1 - Women's waterworks: evaluating an early intervention for incontinence among adult women
AU - Lee, C.
AU - Johnson, Claire
AU - Chiarelli, P.
PY - 2005
Y1 - 2005
N2 - Seventy six Australian women aged 27 to 72, with minimal to mild symptoms of incontinence as assessed by the Incontinence SeverityIndex (ISI), were recruited through general medical practices and randomly assigned on a 2:1 basis to intervention or waitlist control. Theintervention, conducted by nurse continence advisors, included physical assessment, pelvic floor muscle training, and bladder trainingoffered on three individual visits at Weeks 1, 9 and 16. The main outcome measures were pelvic floor muscle strength, endurance andcontractility, self-reported incontinence severity, self-recorded bladder function, and participant evaluation of the programme. There werestatistically significant improvements in all measures, and the women’s evaluations of the programme were overwhelmingly positive.From these results, it is concluded that an early intervention programme for urinary incontinence is effective among women whochoose to attend. However, it appears that there are barriers to women seeking help and it was shown that public health interventionsare needed to de-stigmatise and prevent the condition.
AB - Seventy six Australian women aged 27 to 72, with minimal to mild symptoms of incontinence as assessed by the Incontinence SeverityIndex (ISI), were recruited through general medical practices and randomly assigned on a 2:1 basis to intervention or waitlist control. Theintervention, conducted by nurse continence advisors, included physical assessment, pelvic floor muscle training, and bladder trainingoffered on three individual visits at Weeks 1, 9 and 16. The main outcome measures were pelvic floor muscle strength, endurance andcontractility, self-reported incontinence severity, self-recorded bladder function, and participant evaluation of the programme. There werestatistically significant improvements in all measures, and the women’s evaluations of the programme were overwhelmingly positive.From these results, it is concluded that an early intervention programme for urinary incontinence is effective among women whochoose to attend. However, it appears that there are barriers to women seeking help and it was shown that public health interventionsare needed to de-stigmatise and prevent the condition.
M3 - Article
SN - 1448-0131
VL - 11
SP - 11
EP - 16
JO - Australian and New Zealand Continence Journal
JF - Australian and New Zealand Continence Journal
ER -
