Assessment of contractility of the pelvic floor – from the clinical practice of scientific research - Is there a correlation between the methods of functional evaluation and electromyography?

Hypothesis / aims of study The female pelvic floor suffers lifelong, secondary damage to mechanical loads, muscle injuries or nerve-mediated and / or aggravated by impact activities, successive pregnancies, births, especially traumatic, among others. With the evolution of medicine and better able to understand more predisposing factors and crucial to dysfunctions resulting from the failure of the pelvic floor, which can lead to loss or diminution of the elastic function of these muscles, causing dysfunctions urogynecology. Changes in pelvic floor muscle function have been placed in evidence due to the evolution of methods and techniques that make their evaluation and prognosis very accurate. Bidigital vaginal palpation is a widely used method in clinical practice because it is simple, reproducible, low cost by not requiring special equipment, however, is considered a subjective method and must be performed by a trained professional (1). Another important aspect is that there are several recognized standardization, which ultimately did not allow inter-examiner comparisons when each one is based in one of them. In contrast, electromyography (EMG) is one of the most accurate and objective, to record the action potentials of muscle fibers. This allows more reliable comparison of parameters during the assessments and reassessments. As their electrical signals are transmitted to a computer screen, allows the patient greater understanding and perception of their ability to twitch. However, the EMG is also limited due to lower reliability of the EMG needle, but has greater acceptance among patients urogynecologic because it is not invasive. This method is more expensive compared to other forms of evaluation of the pelvic floor, requires a skilled professional to perform and especially to analyze their data, and therefore its use has been restricted to scientific research. The aim of this study was to investigate whether vaginal palpation bidigital correlates with clinical electromyography of the pelvic floor muscles and can be used in clinical practice with safety and practicality.