Physical Therapy Intervention for Women With Dyspareunia: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Effects of Physical Exercise on Sexual Function and Quality of Sexual Life Related to Menopausal Symptoms in Peri- and Postmenopausal Women: A Systematic Review

“…Additionally, no improvements were observed after PFMT alone, and compared with silicon pessary treatment a significant difference was reported in favor of the latter [26]. Finally, Schvartzman et al [25] reported that five sessions of PFMT combined with thermotherapy for the relaxation of pelvic floor muscles and myofascial release of PMF trigger points were effective in improving both sexual function and quality of sexual life related to menopausal symptoms.…”

“…The risk of bias assessment is shown in Table 1. Out of the eight randomized controlled trials (RCTs) included in this systematic review [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27], only six articles [20][21][22][23][24][25] described the exclusions and losses to follow-up.…”

“…With a total number of eleven articles under analysis, five out of the eight RCTs were two-armed trials [20,22,23,26], two were three-armed [21,24] and one had four arms [27]. Four RCTs were conducted in Asia (two in Iran, one in China, and one in Thailand) [20][21][22][23], four in America (two in the USA, two in Brazil, and one in Canada) [24,25,[28][29][30] and two in Europe (both in the Netherlands) [25,27]. A total of 1548 women were selected for participation in the 11 studies included in this systematic review.…”

“…All studies involved healthy women except four cases in which subjects suffered from primary breast cancer and treatment-induced menopause [27]; genitourinary syndrome of menopause and stress or mixed urinary incontinence [30]; pelvic organ prolapse [26]; and dyspareunia [25]. Pelvic floor muscle (PFM) exercises, either alone [20,21,25] or combined with resistance exercises [28] or physiotherapy treatment [25,30] were the most widely used type of activity. Other studies employed aerobic exercises alone [23,24] or together with resistance exercises [29] or cognitive-behavioral treatment including relaxation exercises.…”

“…The latter were also employed as an individual intervention [27]. Two articles involved mind-body interventions such as yoga [24] and Rusie Dutton [22], and one performed on women with pelvic organ prolapse employed a silicone pessary [25]. The duration of the interventions was 12 weeks except for those authored by Ngowsiri et al [22] (13 weeks), Mastrangelo et al [29] (8 weeks), Panman et al [26], whose studies on women with pelvic organ prolapse reached 24 months, and Schvartzman et al [25], who did not describe the exact duration of the intervention (simply reporting five one-hour sessions).…”