Exercise intervention in the management of urinary incontinence in older women in villages in Bangladesh: a cluster randomised trial

Publication date: July 2019Source: The Lancet Global Health, Volume 7, Issue 7Author(s): Adrian Wagg, Zafrullah Chowdhury, Jean-Michel Galarneau, Rezaul Haque, Fardous Kabir, Dianna MacDonald, Kamrun Naher, Yutaka Yasui, Nicola CherrySummaryBackgroundGroup exercise-based programmes for urinary incontinence appear to be promising low-cost interventions for women in developing countries, but no evidence exists to support whether they could be implemented or effective in such populations. We aimed to evaluate whether a group intervention that comprised pelvic floor muscle training, mobility exercises, and bladder education would be more effective than education alone, and report changes between villages (ie, clusters) rather than between individual participants.MethodsIn this cluster randomised trial, we recruited women from 16 pairs of villages in Bangladesh, with each pair comprising similar villages from the same sub-district. Women aged 60–75 years were interviewed to establish eligibility. Women were eligible if they had current urinary incontinence, and were excluded if they had a third degree or higher uterine prolapse, if they were unable to walk or stand without help, or if they had insufficient intellectual capacity to understand questions and follow instructions. The villages were randomly assigned within each pair to either exercise plus education or education-only intervention by use of a random number generator from a fixed seed. Women were excluded after consent...
Source: The Lancet Global Health - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research