The UPC and the Hospital Clínic of Barcelona create a device for rehabilitating the pelvic floor at home
Pelvic-floor therapy is used to treat urinary incontinence, which affects one in four Spanish women over 65.
By Biocat
A team of researchers at the Biomedical Engineering Research Centre (CREB) of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya-BarcelonaTech (UPC) and the Pelvic Floor Unit of the Hospital Clínic of Barcelona have developed a high-performance device for rehabilitating the pelvic floor at home. The device offers advanced features, similar to those used in clinical practice.
Exercises to rehabilitate the pelvic floor are recommended as the initial treatment for urinary incontinence, a problem affecting more than 81 million people worldwide, most of them women. In Spain 25% of women aged 65 years and over suffer from this complaint.
The new device developed by the UPC and the Hospital Clínic of Barcelona is the only portable biofeedback unit that assesses training by monitoring the activity of the muscles of the pelvic floor and abdomen while the patient does the exercises. In addition, it helps therapists to create a personal exercise programme because they can set the number, length and sequence of contractions that they prescribe. The new device records all the activity that the patient performs at home and allows therapists to obtain the information electronically.
Another improvement of the new device is that the program analyzes the patient’s data and provides an initial assessment of the results. The therapist monitors the patient’s progress through a detailed report on the results of the exercises. In addition, the software can automatically adjust the prescribed exercises according to the results obtained by the patient.
The portable device and the clinical management program with a statistical algorithm were developed by the researchers Joan José Ramos and Miguel Ángel Mañanas of the Biomedical Engineering Research Centre of the UPC.
The prototype was the result of a multidisciplinary project involving Dr. Montserrat Espuña, head of the Pelvic Floor Unit of the Clinical Institute of Obstetrics and Neonatology (ICGON) of the Hospital Clínic, and Amelia Perez, an expert nurse in urinary incontinence working at the Unit, which has 30 years of experience in treating this problem. Dr. Espuña is chair of the Pelvic Floor Section of the Spanish Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology and chair of the Scientific Committee of the International Continence Society (ICS).
The new device has already been tested by a group of patients and a group of volunteers in a pre-clinical testing phase, with very satisfactory results. The prototype has been patented, and several international companies have shown interest in the device, which substantially improves home treatment with medical supervision of a problem that is becoming increasingly common: between 2005 and 2011 the incidence of urinary incontinence increased by 5.86%.
More information in the UPC website.