12/03/2025
Lately I have done a deep dive into a somewhat controversial topic: What is a pelvic floor chair and can it actually help with incontinence?
A pelvic floor chair is something that patients sit on fully clothed, while high frequency electromagnetic waves cause contractions of their pelvic floor muscles.
Pelvic floor chairs are not meant to be a stand-alone treatment, yet sadly this is how they are often marketed. The marketing also incorrectly says that the chair causes a patient's pelvic floor to do thousands of Kegel exercises. So patients think "great!" and pelvic health professionals think "hmmm. Does this actually work?"
Pelvic floor chairs should be thought of as another modality, to be used as an adjunct to pelvic floor physiotherapy. PELVIC FLOOR PHYSIOTHERAPY (incorporating individual treatment plans, education and home exercises) IS STILL THE GOLD STANDARD FOR TREATING ALL TYPES OF INCONTINENCE.
Patients: if you are interested in trying a pelvic floor chair, make sure you choose the right setting. A clinic with medical professionals like nurses and physiotherapists will yield better results than an esthetic clinic setting.
Physios and health professionals: be open minded and do your research. Personally, I was initially very against these chairs but I now believe that they could be helpful to some patients, in the proper clinical setting, as an ADJUNCT to pelvic health physiotherapy treatment.
If you are interested in learning more, a great place to start is Episode 86 of the : can the Kegel chair and physiotherapy be friends? https://open.spotify.com/episode/3N8XXK2dk0ZpwXaExbBOiP?si=gl9UlC-aRx6wpojAnp6CQw
