PREVALENCE OF PELVIC FLOOR DYSFUNCTION IN POSTPARTUM WOMEN

Abstract

Background: Pelvic floor dysfunction may adversely affect the quality of life of pregnant and postpartum women. Very little epidemiologic information on this exists, despite the fact that pelvic floor dysfunction has been one of the most common indications for gynaecologic surgery. The objective of the study is to determine the prevalence of complaint of pelvic floor dysfunction in postpartum women and its relation to various predisposing factors.

Materials and methods: Cross-sectional, questionnaire-based study was performed at a tertiary care hospital. Three hundred eighty-five postpartum women were interviewed for symptoms regarding presence of pelvic floor dysfunction, urinary flatus and faecal incontinence and outcomes were noted. The data was analyzed by IBM SPSS Statistics 23.

Results: The prevalence of pelvic floor dysfunction was 20.7%, out of which urinary incontinence was 10.6%, flatus incontinence was 11.9%, faecal incontinence was 8.6% and pelvic organ prolapse was 1.6%. Prevalence of pelvic floor dysfunction was found to be significantly higher in multiparous women, women who had instrumental delivery, prolonged labour, use of fundal pressure and history of previous genital surgery.

Conclusion: The study highlighted that one out of five women suffer from pelvic floor dysfunction after delivery and identified the factors that are associated with high risk of pelvic floor dysfunction. There is an unmet need of routinely enquiring for incontinence in this subset of women, so that timely and adequate intervention can be planned.

Keywords: Pelvic floor dysfunction; Postpartum; Incontinence; Pregnancy; Prolapse