Clinical trial NCT05812170: Pelvic Floor Dysfunctions and Female Athletes
Official title: Awareness, Control and Treatment of Urinary Incontinence and Other Pelvic Floor Dysfunctions in Female Athletes
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Pelvic Floor Disorders
Keywords: Female
Athlete
Track and Field
Education
Lead sponsor: University of the Balearic Islands
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: Fundació d'investigació Sanitària de les Illes Balears
name: Consejo Superior de Deportes, Spain
First posted: 2023-04-13
Enrollment: 281
Sex: FEMALE
Minimum age (years): 18
Maximum age (years): 45
Standard ages: ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: NON_RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Intervention model description: A quasiexperimental controlled trial is designed, with two arms: an experimental group and a control group.
Primary purpose: PREVENTION

Brief summary: Pelvic floor dysfunctions (PFD) are especially prevalent among females athletes due to the efforts from sports practice. As conservational management, increasing the athletes' information regard important research lines. However, embarrassment of female athletes limits educational or health demands and facilitate an invisible condition, potentially influenced by gender stereotypes. New technologies could facilitate engaging virtual educational approaches. This study will evaluate the effects of an educational online session about PFD in the knowledge about it, and practices related with it, existing gender stereotypes and PFD diagnosis of female athletes. To this end, all female athletes who practice Track and Field in Spain will be invited to attend an educational online session with theoretical-practical content about PF. As eligibility criteria, participants should train and compete in any of the Track and Field modalities, and have federative license from regional or national Track and Field Federation at the moment of the start of the study. Participants should have at least 18 years old. The investigators expect 400 athletes to fulfill the questionnaires, of which the investigators expect 200 to attend the educational online session.

Before the educational online session, all female athletes will reply an anonymous questionnaire to inform about their knowledge of PFD, daily practices related to PFD, influencing gender stereotypes and PFD auto-reported diagnosis. One month later, this questionnaire will be sent to female athletes (both athletes who attended the educational session or not) to describe changes after attending the online educational session and compared to those athletes who did not attend it. The main outcomes will be the level of knowledge about PF, the number of detrimental practices potentially related to PFD, the number of healthy practices to care PF and existence of influencing gender stereotypes. As an additional outcome, it will be considered the PFD auto-reported diagnosis.

Detailed description: The educational online session will last 90 minutes, as follows: 10 minutes of contextualization, 40 minutes of practical content about pelvic floor consciousness and 40 of theoretical content (anatomy and practices related to PFD). Also, a 3D realistic virtual model of pelvic floor structures will be used.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* To train and compete in any of the Track and Field modalities
* To have federative license from regional or national Track and Field Federation in the season when study starts.

Exclusion Criteria:

* Non-applicable

Primary outcomes:
measure: Knowledge about pelvic floor
timeFrame: One month
measure: Detrimental practices related to pelvic floor dysfunctions
timeFrame: One month
measure: Healthy practices to care pelvic floor
timeFrame: One month
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Gender stereotypes
timeFrame: One month
measure: PFD auto-reported diagnosis
timeFrame: One month
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Palma De Mallorca
country: Spain
facility: University of the Balearic Islands
state: Balearic Islands
Study officials:
affiliation: University of the Balearic Islands
name: Natalia Romero-Franco, PhD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References: