Aims: To assess women's self-perception of their pelvic floor muscle (PFM) contraction and its agreement with an assessed PFM contraction. Further, to assess a possible correlation between women's self-perception and reports of urinary incontinence (UI) and between PFM contraction and severity of UI. Methods:A cross-sectional observational study including 82 women. The study was conducted in a basic healthcare unit in Brazil. PFM contraction was assessed by a physiotherapist and estimated by women using the Modified Oxford Scale (MOS). UI symptoms were assessed using a validated questionnaire (ICIQ-UI-SF). A descriptive analysis of the data was performed. The weighted κ coefficient, Spearman's correlation coefficient, and Fisher's exact test were used to analyze data. Results: Eighty-two women with a mean age of 46.83 (±17.94) were analyzed.The majority (98.8%) believed they were able to voluntarily contract their PFM, but only 33% correctly estimated their PFM considering the examiner assessment as reference. No agreement (κ = 0.139, P = .087) was found between the examiner's classification and the women's estimation of their PFM contraction. Women's self-perception did not correlate with the ICIQ-IU-SF (r's = .011, P = .922). A moderate negative correlation was found between the assessed PFM contraction and the ICIQ-UI-SF score (r's = −.406, P = .00).Conclusion: Most of the women did not show an accurate self-perception of PFM contraction. No correlation between women's self-perception and the ICIQ-UI-SF score was found, but a negative correlation was found between the assessed PFM contraction and the ICIQ-UI-SF score. K E Y W O R D Sphysiotherapy, women's health, self-perception, urinary incontinence

Background The prevalence of sexual dysfunction is high in postmenopausal women and pelvic floor muscle training (PFMT) could improve sexual function during this period. Aim To assess the effect of a PFMT protocol on sexual function in postmenopausal women and to investigate the effect of this protocol on pelvic floor muscle function. Methods This is an assessor blinded randomized controlled trial including 77 postmenopausal women. The study was registered in ReBEC Trial: RBR-3s3ff7. The intervention group (n = 40) received an intensive supervised PFMT protocol during 12 weeks and the control group (n = 37) received no intervention. Outcomes The primary outcome of the study was assessed by the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) questionnaire and the secondary outcome was the evaluation of pelvic floor muscle function performed by digital palpation using the modified Oxford scale at baseline and after 12 weeks. RESULTS No difference between groups was found in the FSFI domains and total score at baseline and in the second evaluation after 12 weeks. However, after 12 weeks, a higher percentage of women without sexual dysfunction was found in the intervention group (95% CI = 27.97–72.03) when compared to the control group (95% CI = 7.13–92.87). No difference was found between groups in relation to the pelvic floor muscle function at the baseline (P = .2) and after 12 weeks (P = .06). Clinical Implications PFMT is a conservative intervention that can lead women to have less sexual dysfunction. Strengths & Limitations The protocol provided a reduced number of women with sexual dysfunction, the strength of this research is the study design and the limitation is to have used only one tool to assess sexual function although it is a validated questionnaire. CONCLUSION PFMT decreases sexual dysfunction in postmenopausal women.

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Knowledge about pelvic floor muscles (PFM) among women is low and many reasons can lead to this lack of knowledge, such as lack of access to health and educational forums, embarrassment in talking about this topic and concern with social stigma. These women still live with physical and emotional suffering, such as depression, loss of self-esteem and social isolation triggered by PFM dysfunctions, with urinary incontinence (UI) being the most prevalent among dysfunctions. In addition, women also lack good function of the PFM. This study aims to evaluate the knowledge about the PFM and its relation with the capacity to contract these muscles, and of the relation of knowledge with UI reports. This is an observational cross-sectional study. To verify the objectives, the knowledge questionnaire related to PFM, palpation and vaginal manometry and the ICIQ-UI-SF questionnaire were used. Statistical analyzes were performed using statistical software SAS 9.4 Software. The variables were presented in descriptive form. The Pearson correlation coefficient was used to test the association between knowledge on PFM and age, BMI, parity, peak, mean and resistance of PFM and ICIQ-UI-SF score. Fisher's exact test was used to compare knowledge of the PFM with qualitative variables. Values of p≤0.05 were considered statistically significant. A total of 160 women were recruited from the city of Ribeirão Preto, of whom 27 did not attend the evaluation and 133 were included in the study. The mean age of the women was 53.3 (± 13.82), 73 (54.9%) were married, 84 (63.2%) were white, 65 (48.8%) attended school less than 8 years, 107 (80.5%) were multiparous, 83 (62.4%) presented complaints of UI symptoms and 123 (92.5%) had never performed PFM training. The women showed a low level of knowledge about the PFM. The mean score of the PFM knowledge questionnaire s was 0.48 (± 0.97). It was observed that 23.3% of the sample was not able to voluntarily contract their PFM. The values of peak, mean and duration of vaginal manometry were 39.1 cmH2O (± 23.7), 25.5 cmH2O (± 16.1) and 21.1 seconds (± 20.8), respectively. The mean ICIQ-UI-SF score was 7.1 (± 6.8). Among 40.6% of women who demonstrated the ability to contract their PFM, none had knowledge about it. No relationship was found between the knowledge and the contraction capacity of the PFM and between the knowledge and symptoms of UI. However, a correlation was found between knowledge about the PFM and age (r:-0,2044/ p: 0,01), between knowledge and parity (r:-0.19568/ p: 0.02) and an association was found between knowledge and years of education (p: 0,0012), and between knowledge and previous pelvic floor muscle training (p: <0,001).