Pelvic Floor Health Index: Initial validation of a practical postpartum tool for busy clinicians

To design a primary care clinical tool (Pelvic Floor Health Index [PFHI]) to screen for postpartum pelvic floor disorders, as well as complete its psychometric validation.

Prospective cohort study.

Two tertiary care obstetric centres in Vancouver, BC.

Primiparous women older than 19 years of age who were in the immediate postpartum period.

The PFHI was administered to 74 primiparous women immediately postpartum and at 2, 4, and 6 months postpartum. For evaluation of convergent and divergent construct validity, participants also completed several validated questionnaires, including the Female Sexual Functioning Index, the Pelvic Floor Distress Inventory, the 36-Item Short Form Health Survey, and the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale. Fifteen women repeated their 6-month questionnaires 2 weeks later in order to determine test-retest reliability. Responsiveness was assessed by measuring the PFHI score change from baseline to 6 months postpartum.

Pelvic Floor Health Index score was inversely correlated with subscale scores on the Pelvic Floor Distress Inventory at all time points. There were moderate correlations between PFHI score and the Female Sexual Functioning Index and 36-Item Short Form Health Survey scores at several time points. There were weak correlations with postpartum depression scores. The intraclass correlation coefficient for test-retest reliability was 0.78 (95% CI 0.47 to 0.92). The PFHI mean total score significantly improved by 1.8 (95% CI 1.0 to 2.6) at 6 months postpartum.

The PFHI is a 10-item, newly validated, and psychometrically robust questionnaire that can be administered to patients in the postpartum period to screen for pelvic floor dysfunction.