Pelvic floor rehabilitation in children with functional LUTD: does it improve outcome?

Summary Introduction If children do not experience satisfactory relief of LUTD complaints after standard urotherapy is provided, other treatment options need to be explored. To date little is known about the clinical value of pelvic floor rehabilitation in the treatment of functional voiding disorders. Objective Therefore, we compared pelvic floor rehabilitation (PFR) by biofeedback with anal balloon expulsion (BABE) to intensive urotherapy in the treatment of children with inadequate pelvic floor control and functional lower urinary tract dysfunction (LUTD). Study design A retrospective chart study was conducted on children with functional incontinence and inadequate pelvic floor control. All children referred for both intensive inpatient urotherapy and pelvic floor rehabilitation between 2010-2018, were considered for inclusion. A total of fifty-two patients were eligible with twenty-five children in the group that received BABE prior to inpatient urotherapy, and twenty-twenty-seven children in the group who received BABE subsequently to urotherapy. Main outcome measurement was treatment success according to ICCS criteria measured after treatment rounds and follow-up. Results Baseline characteristics demonstrate no major differences between the BABE and control group. There was a significant difference in improvement between BABE and inpatient urotherapy after the first and second round of treatment (round 1: BABE vs urotherapy; 12% vs 70% respectively round 2: urotherapy vs BABE; 92% vs 34%, respectively, both p Discussion:Our findings imply that training pelvic floor control in combination with inpatient urotherapy does not influence treatment effectiveness on incontinence. Intensive urotherapy contains biofeedback by real-time uroflowmetry, children receive direct feedback on their voiding behaviour. Attention offered to the child and achieving cognitive maturity with corresponding behaviour is of paramount importance. It is known that combining several kinds of biofeedback does not enhance the outcome. However, our results do not provide a conclusive answer to the effectiveness of pelvic floor physical therapy in the treatment of children with LUTD, since we specifically investigated BABE. Conclusion In this study, we could not prove that pelvic floor rehabilitation by BABE has an additional effect on inpatient urotherapy on incontinence outcomes. Considering the invasive nature of BABE, the use of BABE to obtain continence should therefore be discouraged.