18 min
Episode 1686 - The 2024 pelvic floor exam #PTonICE Daily Show
-
- Fitness
Dr. Alexis Morgan // #ICEPelvic // www.ptonice.com
In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, #ICEPelvic Division Leader Alexis Morgan discusses what a pelvic floor exam looks like in light of updated practice patterns & research,.
Take a listen to learn how to better serve this population of patients & athletes or check out the full show notes on our blog at www.ptonice.com/blog.
If you're looking to learn more about our live pregnancy and postpartum physical therapy courses or our online physical therapy courses, check our entire list of continuing education courses for physical therapy including our physical therapy certifications by checking out our website. Don't forget about all of our FREE eBooks, prebuilt workshops, free CEUs, and other physical therapy continuing education on our Resources tab.
Are you looking for more information on how to keep lifting weights while pregnant? Check out the ICE Pelvic bi-weekly newsletter!
EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION
ALEXIS MORGAN
Good morning. Welcome to the PT on Ice daily show. My name is Dr. Alexis Morgan. I am one of the faculty with the pelvic division and happy Monday. I'm excited to be here this morning to talk to you all about the 2024 version of the pelvic floor assessment. We've been through so many iterations as a profession of the pelvic floor assessment. And I want to just take a few minutes today to talk with you all about the 2024 version, the updated version, the modern way to assess the pelvic floor. Thanks for joining me. Let's jump right in.
HISTORY OF THE PELVIC FLOOR EXAM
So when we think about the history of the pelvic floor exam, this goes way back, all the way to Dr. Kegel. I've actually done some podcast episodes on the history, and if history's not your jam, don't worry, I won't bore you with the history details today. But our pelvic floor exam does go way back decades, closing in on 100 years now. And over the last several decades, of course, we've had a lot more research come out and a lot more evidence, a lot more understanding of these muscles that are at the base of the pelvic floor. And so with, of course, new updates, new pieces of understanding, we're still gathering information, but of course, as we change in the way that we understand a group of muscles, of course we're gonna change in the way that we assess them clinically, right? We see this so frequently when we look at the evidence on strength. So strength is not necessarily indicative of problems or lack thereof problems. Yet we are so often talking about assessing strength and obsessing about what manual muscle test grade is there. And yes, if you're not familiar, we do have a manual muscle testing score for the pelvic floor. but realize that that is such a small piece of the entire picture. And we're starting to see this in the evidence as just described, and there's several studies that are making us go, hmm, maybe it's not all about strength. But how do we then take that into our clinical practice?
FOCUS ON RANGE OF MOTION & MUSCLE COORDINATION
First and foremost, we ourselves need to back off of obsessing about strength, right? We need to really get a full understanding of the person in front of us and really gather that information and not just talk about strength, but talk about the entire picture. So, here's the updated version of the way that we do our assessments. First, we're going to test their range of motion. I'll dive into each of these details, but I want to give you all the overall picture first. So first, we do a range of motion assessment. Then we go into coordination. And after coordination, then we might go into a strength assessment. We might go into a palpation assessment. or we might go into a prolapse assessment, depending on how that person shows up in front of us. We may take it a few different directions, our assessment, but we're going to start with the range of motion and coordination assessment. Range of motion and coordination are important fo
Dr. Alexis Morgan // #ICEPelvic // www.ptonice.com
In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, #ICEPelvic Division Leader Alexis Morgan discusses what a pelvic floor exam looks like in light of updated practice patterns & research,.
Take a listen to learn how to better serve this population of patients & athletes or check out the full show notes on our blog at www.ptonice.com/blog.
If you're looking to learn more about our live pregnancy and postpartum physical therapy courses or our online physical therapy courses, check our entire list of continuing education courses for physical therapy including our physical therapy certifications by checking out our website. Don't forget about all of our FREE eBooks, prebuilt workshops, free CEUs, and other physical therapy continuing education on our Resources tab.
Are you looking for more information on how to keep lifting weights while pregnant? Check out the ICE Pelvic bi-weekly newsletter!
EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION
ALEXIS MORGAN
Good morning. Welcome to the PT on Ice daily show. My name is Dr. Alexis Morgan. I am one of the faculty with the pelvic division and happy Monday. I'm excited to be here this morning to talk to you all about the 2024 version of the pelvic floor assessment. We've been through so many iterations as a profession of the pelvic floor assessment. And I want to just take a few minutes today to talk with you all about the 2024 version, the updated version, the modern way to assess the pelvic floor. Thanks for joining me. Let's jump right in.
HISTORY OF THE PELVIC FLOOR EXAM
So when we think about the history of the pelvic floor exam, this goes way back, all the way to Dr. Kegel. I've actually done some podcast episodes on the history, and if history's not your jam, don't worry, I won't bore you with the history details today. But our pelvic floor exam does go way back decades, closing in on 100 years now. And over the last several decades, of course, we've had a lot more research come out and a lot more evidence, a lot more understanding of these muscles that are at the base of the pelvic floor. And so with, of course, new updates, new pieces of understanding, we're still gathering information, but of course, as we change in the way that we understand a group of muscles, of course we're gonna change in the way that we assess them clinically, right? We see this so frequently when we look at the evidence on strength. So strength is not necessarily indicative of problems or lack thereof problems. Yet we are so often talking about assessing strength and obsessing about what manual muscle test grade is there. And yes, if you're not familiar, we do have a manual muscle testing score for the pelvic floor. but realize that that is such a small piece of the entire picture. And we're starting to see this in the evidence as just described, and there's several studies that are making us go, hmm, maybe it's not all about strength. But how do we then take that into our clinical practice?
FOCUS ON RANGE OF MOTION & MUSCLE COORDINATION
First and foremost, we ourselves need to back off of obsessing about strength, right? We need to really get a full understanding of the person in front of us and really gather that information and not just talk about strength, but talk about the entire picture. So, here's the updated version of the way that we do our assessments. First, we're going to test their range of motion. I'll dive into each of these details, but I want to give you all the overall picture first. So first, we do a range of motion assessment. Then we go into coordination. And after coordination, then we might go into a strength assessment. We might go into a palpation assessment. or we might go into a prolapse assessment, depending on how that person shows up in front of us. We may take it a few different directions, our assessment, but we're going to start with the range of motion and coordination assessment. Range of motion and coordination are important fo
18 min