Comparison Between Pelvic Muscle Training and Pilates Exercises for UI in Postmenopausal Women

Introduction: Urinary incontinence (UI) is a condition that affects around 40% of postmenopausal women and is therefore considered a public health problem. Conservative treatment is recommended, and pelvic floor muscle training (PMT) is considered the gold standard for this type of condition. However, other possibilities of exercises have been studied to achieve continence, such as Pilates exercises, which focus on the stabilizing muscles and request a voluntary contraction of the muscles of the pelvic floor (PFM), it is believed that it can recruit fibers from these muscles, improving muscle function and episodes of urinary incontinence. However, the literature is still inconclusive regarding the effects of Pilates exercises on urinary incontinence and PFM function. Objective: To compare the effects of 3 months of muscle training, through TMAP and Pilates exercises on the improvement of UI in postmenopausal women. Methods: 40 postmenopausal women with urinary incontinence will be randomly assigned to two intervention groups: pelvic floor muscle training and Pilates exercises. The evaluations will be carried out before the interventions and after three months of them, and will involve the following instruments: urinary incontinence and aspects related to quality of life, assessed using the International Consultation of Urinary Incontinence questionnaire Short Form (ICIQ-UI-SF); 7-day voiding diary, used to identify possible modifiable factors related to urination and its frequency; Pad-test used to identify and quantify UI; Feeling Scale, to portray the affective valence of the exercises; Female Sexual Function Index, which will assess female sexual function; Manometric assessment of muscle strength and PFM endurance with Epi-no; and Manometric evaluation by bidigital palpation using the PERFECT test. Shapiro Wilk tests will be performed to verify normality, Student's t or Mann Whitney U test according to parametric or non-parametric distribution, ANCOVA for compari