Incollection,
Significance of fibre geometry on passive-active response of pelvic muscles to evaluate pelvic dysfunction
BioMedWomen: Proceedings of the International Conference on Clinical and BioEngineering for Women's Health (Porto, Portugal, 20-23 June, 2015), CRC Press/Balkema, London, (2016)
Abstract
A perfect tone of the pelvic muscle fibres elevates the pelvic organs and maintains the urinary and fecal continence. Prosthetic mesh implants are widely used to reconstruct the pelvic floor dysfunctions due to damaged muscle fibres. This paper focuses on the muscle fibre orientation to simulate the passive stretching of the pelvic muscles under increased intra-abdominal pressure (IAP) during Valsalva maneuver. The Humphrey model is adopted for the passive deformation of the pelvic muscle. With a pressure of 0.2 kPa applied on the internal faces of the muscle, the levator ani (LA) muscle displaces 27.917 mm inferiorly. High stress is observed at the fixation of the muscle to the pubic bones. Without any supports from the anal plate and the perineal body, the posterior movement of the LA muscle is 11.640 mm which is almost 2.5 times larger than that observed from the MRI examination of a nulliparous female.
