Episode 1691 - Call to action: pelvic PREhab in the community #PTonICE Daily Show

Dr. April Dominick // #ICEPelvic // www.ptonice.com 


In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, #ICEPelvic faculty member April Dominick discusses how to close the pelvic floor knowledge gap through education in the community, prior to an individual needing formal pelvic PT.
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.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION
APRIL DOMINICK
Good morning, PT on Ice. My name is April Dominick. I am Ice Pelvic Faculty and your host this morning. Let's chat about how PTs can close the knowledge gap when it comes to basic pelvic floor education in the community. Essentially, I'm presenting a case for how we can use a prehab framework to educate individuals prior to the onset of pelvic floor dysfunction, or them requiring formal PT. What really gets my knickers in a knot is how uneducated we are as a society about our bodies. It blows my mind, all of the incredible systems that are happening in our body, like breathing, pumping blood to muscles and organs, filtering through nutrients to store stool and urine. All that's happening in the background right now while you're listening attentively to me on this podcast. All is fine and dandy with those processes until one day it's not. Until one day you're listening to your friend who is a singer and she tells you that her pessary, the device that she inserts into her vagina to support her bladder, fell out on stage. while she was singing her solo for her opera. But she's never heard of the pelvic floor muscles or pelvic floor muscle training, which can also support her bladder. Or the baseball coach who's two years post-prostatectomy and now struggles going to work because he leaks pee when he's yelling out plays to the players. or when he's demonstrating a new sprinting strategy to the team. Does he know that just because he doesn't have a uterus, he also has a pelvic floor too? An entire group of muscles that he can voluntarily control to help him not leak when he's yelling or when he's running. We are undereducated about our bodies. There is a massive gap in knowledge when it comes to the pelvic floor and treatment options or associated risk factors with pelvic floor dysfunction. This gap in knowledge could be the difference between someone getting surgery or avoiding it due to prior knowledge and doing conservative care instead. Zooming out on a larger scale, I got to thinking, what role do we as PTs have in teaching individuals in our communities about the pelvic floor and any related pressure management systems before they reach the point of needing to come into our office for formal PT or surgery? Given that the rates of pelvic floor dysfunction rise with age, there's so much power to potentially reduce function, such as urinary leakage, simply through pelvic floor education at any age, at any stage in life. So that parents feel comfortable educating their kids in this space. So that grandma Betty can advocate for herself and ask for specific treatment options for painful intercourse that she learned at a talk at her community rec center. And so that Sam feels empowered to talk to their coach about leaking and lifting. One issue that's related to pelvic floor dysfunction is intra-abdominal pressure, or IAP. It's defined as steady state pressure that's concealed within the abdominal cavity, a