Discussion
Study limitations
There are limitations to this study. In sifting through the
conditions of SUI in pregnant women, the researcher asked
only about the symptoms of the condition of urinary
incontinence occurring in the past 1 month. The researcher
did not, however, ask about the symptoms of other types of
urinary incontinence which might also have occurred but
could not be confirmed through laboratory investigations or
physician’s confirmation. Thus, it was difficult for the
researcher to clearly identify whether or not the symptoms
of SUI were also due to other types of urinary incontinence.
The findings of this study were discussed according to the
patho-physiological changes involved with SUI during pregnancy
and conservative treatment by using PFME to relieve
SUI symptoms. It could provide data that could lead to an
improvement in nursing practice. These findings indicate that
the specially designed 6-week PFME programme during
pregnancy was effective at decreasing the severity of SUI in
pregnant women. This finding supported the research
hypothesis 1 and 2 of this study and can be explained by
increasing the strength of the pelvic floor muscles. The
strength of the pelvic floor muscles corrected the mobility of
the bladder neck and the urethra, leading to increased
urethral sphincter competence and increased urethral resistance
(Newman 2001), thus resulting in decreased frequency
and amount of urinary leakage further leading to improvement
of the quality of life among the pregnant women in the
experimental group which participated in the 6-week PFME
programme (Newman 2001).
These findings also concurred with those reported by
Dumoulin et al. (2004) who studied the effects of a PFME
programme on mothers with persistent postnatal SUI, finding
that the mothers in the experimental group showed a
statistically significant reduction in urinary leakage from
12Æ5 to 8Æ0 g on a pad test, and a decrease in mean score of
perceived SUI severity as evaluated by VAS from 8Æ0 to 2Æ5
after 8 weeks of PFME (P < 0Æ001 and P < 0Æ001, respectively).
Morkved and Bo (2000) studied the effects of an
8-week postpartum PFME to prevent and treat mothers with
SUI, finding that 13 mothers in the experimental group (16%)
had SUI symptoms at the 16th week postpartum and 15%
had mild frequency of SUI while the control group consisting
of 25 mothers (31%) had SUI symptoms at the 16th week
postpartum and 9% had moderate frequency of SUI. The
results demonstrate an important reduction in the prevalence
of SUI and a decrease in the frequency of SUI in the experimental group following an 8-week intensive exercise
programme compared with the control group which received
only usual nursing care.