EVALUATION OF THE PELVIC FLOOR OF PREGNANT AND POSTPARTUM WOMEN THROUGH TRANSPERINEAL ULTRASONOGRAPHY AND SURFACE ELECTROMYOGRAPHY: A LITERATURE REVIEW.
Pregnancy. Pelvic floor. Transperineal ultrasonography. Surface electromyography.
Pregnancy can cause damage to the pelvic floor (PF), increasing bladder neck activity and resulting in a downward displacement of the bladder, which can result in urinary incontinence and pelvic organ prolapses. However, most professionals who work in prenatal, childbirth and postpartum care are unaware that there are effective and safe tests capable of detecting pelvic changes during pregnancy and after childbirth. Therefore, this review aims to update the evidence on the use of transperineal ultrasonography (TPU) and surface electromyography (sEMG) in the assessment of PF in pregnant and postpartum women. The selection of studies published between 2019 and 2023 was carried out in Medline, PubMed, Lilacs, SciELO and Cochrane Library databases. Twenty four articles were included, 22 observational studies and 2 clinical trials. In most of them, the results support that the technologies are able to assess musculature and other structures of the pelvis in pregnant and postpartum women safely in all gestational trimesters and up to 90 days postpartum. TPU and sEMG, although not available in pregnancy and puerperium care in the Brazilian unified health system, are auxiliary and safe tools for evaluating PF during the pregnancy-puerperal cycle and with the potential to allow the early diagnosis of changes in components of the pelvis that can evolve into diseases.