Diastasis recti abdominis and pelvic floor dysfunction in peri- and postmenopausal women: a cross-sectional study

ABSTRACT

Introduction

Diastasis recti abdominis (DRA) and pelvic floor dysfunction (PFD) occurs commonly with aging; however, little is known about what leads to these changes.

Objective

We aimed to investigate and compare the presence or absence of DRA and PFD in peri- and postmenopausal women.

Methods

This cross-sectional study involved 150 participants who answered questions on their sociodemographic and clinical profiles related to urinary and fecal incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse. Diastasis recti abdominis was diagnosed with a digital caliper.

Results

Supra-umbilical diastasis occurred in 37.3% of cases, and 78.6% of participants with DRA had PFD. No significant differences existed between participants with and without DRA in terms of background and clinical variables. However, participants with DRA were 2.6 times more likely to have PFD than participants without DRA. Furthermore, the presence of DRA was significantly shown to be a risk factor for PFD on binary logistic regression analyses (p = .01, OR = 3.2).

Conclusions

This cross-sectional study suggests that DRA is a predictive factor of PFD in women aged over 50 years.

KEYWORDS:

• Perimenopause
• pelvic floor
• post menopause
• rectus abdominis
• urinary incontinence

Declaration of Interest

The authors report no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the São Paulo Research Foundation -FAPESP under Grant numbers [2016/09733-9, 2017/08371-9 and 2018/01994-3].