Immediate effect of acupuncture on pelvic floor structure in stress urinary incontinence: a case report

Song X, Li Z, Ming S, Guan L, Wang X, Zhang X, Liu L, Chen B, Chen Y · Acupuncture in Medicine · 2022 February 23

Objective

Stress urinary incontinence (SUI) is a common disorder among adult women and is characterized by spontaneous leakage of urine when there is a sudden increase in abdominal pressure caused by, for example, during laughing, sneezing or coughing. Acupuncture is a recognized therapy for SUI. Here we report a case of a patient with SUI, in whom acupuncture at CV3 (Zhongji) appeared to immediately reduce the mobility of the bladder neck and proximal urethra, which may help the interpretation of acupuncture’s mechanism of action in SUI.

Conclusions

The normal recommendations from “Practical Pelvic Floor Ultra-sound Diagnosis” are as follows: BND < 25 mm, URA < 45° and RVA < 140°. In this case, we observed that BND, URA and RVA were decreased after acupuncture at CV3, which suggested that this intervention decreased the mobility of the bladder neck and proximal urethra, suggesting an immediate improvement in functional pelvic floor structure in this SUI patient. Although no firm conclusions can be drawn from this single, uncontrolled case study, this phenomenon is worthy of further investigation and may be one mechanism underlying the acupuncture treatment of SUI.

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