The Family Midwifery Care Centre KOALA is one of the most family-friendly centres in Poland, and, for 14 years, it has been supporting women in preparing for pregnancy and getting back in shape after giving birth. It runs antenatal classes with an original, unique program in Polish and English, provides urogynecological physiotherapy, and exercise classes for pregnant women and mothers with children. The KOALA Centre also brings its mission of comprehensive patient care outside the office by implementing the PelviFly system. Koala creates trends!
“Introducing the PelviFly solution allowed us to take care of and support our patients more effectively during urogynecological rehabilitation in and out of the office as a therapy continuation and completing exercises at home”
– says Anna Lech-Adamczyk: a urogynecological physiotherapist and KOALA co-owner.
As a part of the package OPEN dedicated to PelviFly specialists, the KOALA centre uses:
- kGoal manometric vaginal probe designed by engineers from Stanford University in the USA (place no. 2 in the ranking of the best universities in the world). Currently, the device is used by more than 30,000 women in the world and hundreds of specialists including doctors and physiotherapists.
- Intuitive PelviFly software – application and telecare portal with a chat, which facilitates the continuity of rehabilitation regardless of the place, ensuring a patient’s involvement in the treatment process. The IT infrastructure allows to design individual training plans, observe the rehabilitation progress in real time, and keep in touch with patients.
Performing muscle tests during consultations
“PelviFly works well in diagnostics and improving patient awareness. It gives them real information on what endurance is, what it means to push or not to push, what happens if they use abdominal or gluteal muscles during pelvic floor muscle training. Palpation diagnosis provides the physiotherapist with valuable information about a patient’s pelvic floor function, but this information is not as easily accessible to the patient. Therefore, during visits, I perform a PelviFly muscle test with the device and the mobile application. Often the patient is convinced that they are performing the pelvic floor muscle training correctly. Thinking that they have no problems with muscle contraction strength, endurance or relaxation, thanks to the application and visualization of muscle activity on the phone screen, they have a tangible proof because they see how their muscles really work and gain knowledge of what they should work on,” says urogynecological physiotherapist Anna Lech-Adamczyk.
Individual rehabilitation plan and continual analysis of pelvic floor muscle performance
”PelviFly gives us the possibility to control our workouts, and you can adjust the changes in the workouts in real time. It allows us to perform muscle tests remotely – for patients who are already aware of their body, know the correct contraction strength and have the ability to differentiate between tension and relaxation this is a very good feedback option”.
The patient is equipped with a device (a vaginal probe) and a mobile application and trains at home between visits under the remote care of her physiotherapist from the KOALA team. The access to the telecare portal allows the physiotherapist to assess the muscle function tests, and thus to select a load that is safe for the patient in her exercises. The physiotherapist has access to the performed training sessions and individual exercise plans which appear in the application immediately after being set in the portal.
Patient education and habit building
The support provided by the application in managing pelvic floor dysfunction is invaluable. The application is also equipped with a user-friendly education module in the form of clear lessons, advice and illustrations for each day, which motivate to change habits. For example, the patient is educated about correct pelvic floor habits, which are often forgotten after visits, or about how to do sports activities to keep the pelvic floor safe.
Telecare solutions support women and specialists. The effectiveness of pelvic floor muscle dysfunction treatment depends largely on the patient’s work at home. PelviFly increases the number of training sessions completed at home by 70%. Studies have shown that medical personnel’s remote supervision of training sessions performed at home affects the implementation of recommendations positively. The women in the study group suffering from incontinence followed the recommended exercise plan, which was in the application, and for 3 months trained on average 748 minutes out of 830 minutes recommended (the implementation rate of the plan was high and reached 90%). The control group also trained at home with the application and device. However, the awareness of the fact that the results are not monitored daily and the lack of constant feedback from the therapist may have had an impact on the fact that the patients did not follow the training program as recommended. The degree of implementation of the plan was only 20%
[Herman U. Prevention and treatment of pelvic floor muscle dysfunction in women using telemedicine. Doctoral thesis. Krakow 2019. Jagiellonian University, Collegium Medicum].
Intrigued? Whether you want to start exercising or are a medical professional/owner of a medical facility – please contact us. We will answer your questions and help you start taking care of your pelvic floor muscles safely and effectively.
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