Pelvic floor muscle activation and strength components influencing female urinary continence and stress incontinence: a systematic review.

Aims: A better understanding of pelvic floor muscle (PFM) activation and strength components is a prerequisite to get better insight in PFM contraction mechanisms and develop more specific PFM-training regimens for female stress urinary incontinence (SUI) patients. The aim of this systematic review (2012:CRD42012002547) was to evaluate and summarize existing studies investigating PFM activation and strength components influencing female continence and SUI.

Methods: PubMed, EMBASE, and Cochrane databases were systematically searched for literature from January 1980 to November 2013 for cross-sectional studies comparing female SUI patients with healthy controls and intervention studies with SUI patients reporting on the association between PFM activation and strength components and urine loss.

'Treatise on the Spinal Marrow and its Diseases' (Anatomy, functions and general considerations on its diseases) by Ollivier d' Angers CP (1796-1845).

Study Design: Collecting and analyzing all possible documents by internet, and consulting medical libraries in different countries.

Objective: To focus on the work of Ollivier d'Angers who, in the beginning of the 19th century, spent most of his professional life studying the spinal cord, marrow (SM), or medulla spinalis, and publishing the first comprehensive treatise on the subject in 1824.

Setting: ParaDoc database, Swiss Paraplegic-Centre, 6207 Nottwil, Switzerland, in collaboration with Paul Dollfus, ISCoS/Paradoc, Mulhouse, France.