Educational Intervention Related to Pelvic Floor Care in Females in Sport: ACTITUD

Overview

Pelvic floor dysfunctions (PFD) are especially prevalent among females who practice and compete in sport. One of the main reason is the great physical effort required to achieve the maximal sports performance. As conservational management, increasing the females' information is an important research line. However, gender stereotypes, embarrassment and normalization among females make it difficult to seek professional care. In this situation, prevention or management of PFD is limited. New technologies could facilitate engaging virtual educational approaches. This study will evaluate the effects of an educational intervention compounded by three sessions (60 min of duration) with one week apart, about PFD, habits related with it, and existing gender stereotypes. To this end, all female who practice and compete in any sport in Spain will be invited to attend an educational online intervention with theoretical-practical content about PFD. As eligibility criteria, participants should train and compete in any sport, and have federative license from regional or national sports federation at the moment of the start of the study. Participants should have at least 16 years old. The investigators expect 400 athletes to fulfill the questionnaires, of which the investigators expect 200 to attend the educational intervention. Before the educational intervention, all females will reply an anonymous questionnaire to inform about their knowledge of PFD, daily practices related to PFD, influencing gender stereotypes and PFD self-reported diagnosis. One month later, this questionnaire will be sent to females (both athletes who attended the educational intervention or not) to describe changes after attending the online educational intervention and compared to those females who did not attend it. The main outcomes will be the level of knowledge about PF, the number of habits potentially related to PFD, and score of gender stereotyped beliefs. As an additional outcome, it will be considered the PFD self-reported symptomatology.

The educational intervention consisted on three 60-minutes online sessions, organized as follows: Session 1: anatomical information about pelvic floor and exercises about pelvic floor consciousness; Session 2: function and dysfunction of pelvic floor and exercises related; Session 3: risk factor for pelvic floor dysfunctions and exercises to strengthen the pelvic floor musculature.