Page 69 - Petelin, Ana. 2024. Ed. Zdravje delovno aktivnih in starejših odraslih | Health of the Working-Age and Older Adults. Zbornik prispevkov z recenzijo | Proceedings. Koper: University of Primorska Press

proving symptoms related to pelvic organ prolapse (Espiño-Albela et al., 2022),
and enhancing sexual function in the postpartum period (Hadizadeh-Talasaz
et al., 2019). This systematic literature review aims to determine the effective-
ness of PFMT in managing CLBP.

Methods

Search Strategy
The literature review included studies identified through the PubMed and
Google Scholar databases, which were searched in October 2023. The search
was conducted using keywords »pelvic floor« and »low back pain,« with the
condition that both phrases must appear in the article title. The final search
query in PubMed was: (»pelvic floor«[Title]) AND (»low back pain«[Title]) and
in Google Scholar: allintitle: »pelvic floor« »low back pain«.
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Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
All studies written in English that met the PICOS criteria were included, regar-
dless of publication year (Methley et al., 2014). Studies were eliglible if they in-
volved participants with CLBP, included at least one of the experimental gro-
up receiving pelvic floor muscle exercises, and compared the effectiveness of
PFMT with a control group or reported data on pain intensity before and after
the intervention. Only randomized controlled trials were included. Exclusion
criteria included studies involving participants with other pathologies, experi- the effect of pelvic floor muscle exercises on chronic low back pain
mental groups receiving additional treatments besides PFMT (except for stan-
dard CLBP treatment), and studies that did not include any experimental gro-
up performing PFMT.

Methodological Quality
The quality of the randomized controlled trials was assessed using the PEDro
scale, which assigns a score from 0 to 10 (Maher et al., 2003). Studies scoring 9
to 10 were considered excellent, 6 to 8 were considered good, 4 to 5 were consid-
ered fair, and below 4 were considered poor quality. The average quality of the
included randomized controlled trials was assessed as fair (average score: 4.28).
Among these, two were of good quality, two were of fair quality, and three were
classified poor quality.

Results
When the mentioned search term was entered in the databases, a total of 40
hits were displayed, 9 in PubMed and 31 in Google Scholar. After removing 3
duplicates, the titles and abstracts of the remaining 37 articles were reviewed. 9
articles met the inclusion criteria and were fully reviewed. Subsequently, 2 stu-
dies were excluded due to inappropriate language and population criteria. The