Evaluation of Awareness, Adherence, and Barriers of Pelvic Floor Muscle Training in Pregnant Women: A Cross-sectional Study

Introduction Adherence to pelvic floor muscle training (PFMT) may be enhanced when the women become aware of its preventive/therapeutic role in pelvic floor disorders. Objective This study is conducted to evaluate the PFMT awareness, adherence, and barriers in pregnant women. Method We studied the awareness, adherence, and barriers of PFMT in 200 pregnant women attended in prenatal care clinic in their third trimester of pregnancy using semistructured interviews with open and closed questions derived from recent literature review on PFMT. Result Fifty-four (27%) of studied women were familiar with PFMT, 175 (87.5%) of patients thought that the UI is normal during pregnancy, and 25 (32.05%) had experienced UI episodes and had consulted with their obstetrician. Twenty-one (10.5%) of patients did the PFMT exercises before their pregnancy, 14 (66.6%) of them continued their PFMT exercises during their pregnancy, and 7 (33.4%) stopped it. Concerns about miscarriage were the main reason of discontinuing the exercises during pregnancy. Routes of knowledge acquisition were the Internet in 24 cases (44.4%), health system in 13 cases (24.07%), family and friends in 11 cases (20.3%), and books/magazines in 6 cases (11.1%). Main means of mass communication (including TV, radio, and newspapers) had no role in knowledge distribution in this filed. Conclusions Pregnant women require more health education regarding PFMT. Health care professionals should be more involved in patient education process. Internet resources are used widely by women and need more academic/scientific supervision.