With every pelvic physiotherapy consultation, you should expect confidentiality and respect as well as discussion and explanation of your presenting condition. A careful, detailed and confidential history will be taken in order to understand the nature of your symptoms, possible triggers and what contributing factors aggravate them. Most importantly, I need to understand how this is affecting your life and what you can start doing to change it.
This is a very important part of the assessment as it will be from here that your physical examination and further treatment will be planned.
The second part of the assessment is the physical examination.
This part can vary from person to person and depending on the condition.
The physical examination will likely start with an assessment of your posture.
The way you move and breathe will give me valuable information about the pain you are experiencing and how your muscles, fascia and joints are feeling and behaving.
The next step is to examine your abdominal and lower back muscles and fascia as well as the pelvis, hips and lumbar spine joints.
Once all this information has been gathered from the external structures, a pelvic floor muscles internal examination may be required.
This is an important part of the examination as it will provide valuable information about the way your pelvic floor muscles are working and how this can be a contributor to your pain.
The findings from both the subjective and physical assessment will be discussed with you and a personalized treatment plan will be established according to your individual needs.
The treatment will be a journey, and the assessment will be an ongoing process.
This will involve teamwork so you can expect a lot of discussion and to have an active role on every decision.
The initial consultation will take around one hour and patients are advised to bring any results of tests, letters or additional information regarding their medical history.
You can read more about this here.
- Pelvic Floor Exercises – The Do’s and Don’ts
- When Should You Have a Pelvic Floor Assessment?