At Active Solutions Physiotherapy, we offer women’s health physio and pelvic pain treatment for both men and women. Megan O’Shea has performed further study in the area of Pelvic Health. She ensures that you remain comfortable throughout this assessment which may involve visualisation of the Pelvic Floor Muscles using Real-time Ultra Sound or an internal assessment.
For your first Pelvic Health assessment please attend the appointment with a full bladder.
- Stress Incontinence – Leaking which can be associated with weak pelvic floor muscles (often after childbirth or menopause) when an external pressure like coughing, sneezing, running or jumping occurs.
- Urinary Urgency – When you have an irritable bladder wall that gives the feeling of an urgent need to go to the toilet. Sometimes you can also leak when you are on the way to the toilet or when you pull down your underwear before you are ready. Often there will be triggers for this feeling like when leaving home, when arriving home or before starting exercise.
- Pelvic floor Prolapse – a feeling of dragging, heaviness or even a vaginal bulge after prolonged standing, lifting, repeated sneezing or straining with constipation.
- Dyspareunia (painful sexual intercourse), Vagissimus, Vestibulodynia – sometimes people cannot completely relax their pelvic floor muscles and this is referred to as pelvic floor over-activity. This causes painful trigger points which can make having sex or using tampons very painful and increased sensitivity of the vagina.
- Real-Time Ultrasound (RTUS) – uses the same technology as when scanning a baby during pregnancy. The internal Pelvic Floor Muscles can be visualised on the screen where you get real-time feedback about the contraction quality and endurance.
- Bladder volume – can be measured by RTUS, which is essential to know when trying to address problems with bladder urgency, frequency and overactivity.
- Muscle Contraction Biofeedback – Using a sensor to measure the activity of the pelvic floor muscles that you can see on the computer in real time. Muscle contraction biofeedback offers another avenue to measure and understand how the internal muscles function.
