Vaginal pressure during lifting, floor exercises, jogging, and use of hydraulic exercise machines

We recorded vaginal pressure in 12 women without risk factors for prolapse during two activity and exercise sessions, compared exercise and cough pressure, and evaluated method reproducibility and patterns of relative pressure. Portable urodynamic equipment, repeated measures descriptive design, and purposeful sampling were used with nonparametric analysis and visual comparison of pressure graphs. Mean participant age was 31.1 years (range 20–51), and mean body mass index was 22.7 (range 18.5–29.3). Mean pressures (in cm H₂O): cough, 98.0 (48.0–133.7); standing, 24.0 (15.9–28.5); supine exercise, 34.0 (6.3–91.9); exercise machines, 37.0 (20.3–182.3). Repeated measures correlations for selected measures ranged from 0.66 (p ≤ 0.05) to 0.91 (p ≤ 0.01), and median within-woman coefficients of variation ranged from 3.8% to 7.2%. Individual pressure patterns were not consistent with patterns of group medians. We concluded that vaginal pressure measurement is reproducible in women without prolapse and that studied exercises generally produced lower pressure than cough, but individuals varied in pressure exerted. Individual variations warrant further study.