Impact of pelvic floor muscle training in pelvic organ prolapse

This review article was aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of pelvic floor muscle training (PFMT) during conservative management and as an adjunct to prolapse surgery based on recently published articles.

The PubMed and PEdro databases were searched from 2005 to 2020 for all types of studies reporting on PFMT as the primary treatment for conservative management of prolapse as well as an adjunct for prolapse surgery.

The result of this review demonstrated that PFMT is effective in conservative management, especially in women with mild to moderate prolapse(stages I-III), for those who wish to have more children, who are not willing to undergo surgery, who are frail because of co-morbidities, and for those who need to delay surgery. However, results evaluating the effectiveness of PFMT as an adjunct to surgery demonstrated insufficient evidence to support the benefit of PFMT in addition to prolapse surgery over the use of surgery alone.

Through this review, we have concluded that PFMT shows a more prominent effect when applied as conservative management. Currently available evidence demonstrated no additional clinically significant augmentation of PFMT as an adjunct to surgery compared with prolapse surgery alone.