Effect of spinal stabilization exercises to reduce urinary incontinence in the elderly

Urinary incontinence has an increasing process among aged women and its statistics in women in The Home for the Elderly is more than others. The purpose of this study is to investigate effect of 4 weeks Spinal Stabilization exercises on urinary incontinence of the elderly people. In this study, participants are elderly women from age of 50 to 70 years old (67±11kg and BMI of 27±4kg/m2), who were placed in two experimental and control groups (10 people in each group) for 4 weeks (3 sessions per week). Urinary incontinence of the participants was measured through ICIQ-OAB questionnaire in pretest and posttest steps. According to abnormal distribution of data, nonparametric tests are used such as Wilcoxon and U Mann Whitney tests to test intragroup and intergroup variations at the level of p≤0.05. Spinal stabilization exercises caused significant reduction of urinary incontinence in elderly women (p=0.001), so that the exercises can result in insignificant reduction of urinary frequency per day (p=0.083), significant reduction of urinary frequency per night (p=0.001), stress of fast use of WC (p=0.001) and leakage of urine (p=0.002). Moreover, intergroup investigations showed that experimental group has lower urinary incontinence than control group (p=0.01). Spinal stabilization exercises can result in reduction of urinary incontinence and its components through strengthening pelvic floor and abdominal muscles.