NHS Fact Sheet

Click here to download a PDF of the NHS Fact Sheet for the Pelvic Toner

Introduction

The PelvicToner™ offers significant cost benefits to the NHS and much improved patient outcomes in all those situations where pelvic floor exercises are recommended eg stress incontinence, prolapse and sexual dysfunction following childbirth and menopause.

The pro-active use of an effective exercise regime should resolve over 80% of cases of stress incontinence and obviate the need for pharmaceutical and surgical intervention in the majority of cases.

By dealing effectively with the problem in primary care, scarce resources in physiotherapy and other departments can then be focussed on the more difficult and complex cases.

The scale of the problem is huge and over 700,000 new mums should receive pelvic floor rehabilitation each year and 4 million women suffer urinary stress incontinence. It is fully acknowledged that the NHS does not manage this condition effectively. In particular, the simple handing out of an exercise sheet is neither clinically justified nor recommended by NICE.

The PelvicToner™ is the quickest, simplest and cheapest way to achieve and maintain a stronger pelvic floor and better bladder control because it encourage subjects to undertake and maintain a pelvic floor exercise programme in the most effective way possible.

The PelvicToner is the only pelvic toning device to be available on NHS Prescription and is listed within the Drug Tariff Part IXA-Appliances in the new category of Pelvic Toning Devices. NHS Price £15.00

Applications

The PelvicToner is designed to maximise the effectiveness of pelvic floor muscle exercise and as a training device to ensure a correct exercise regimen and maximum compliance.

The PelvicToner is recommended in all the most common uses of pelvic floor exercise viz:

post-natal pelvic floor rehabilitation
primary treatment of urinary stress incontinence in women
treatment of mild-to-moderate cases of vaginal prolapse or to supplement other treatments for prolapse that are more serious
non-surgical tightening of the vaginal muscles in cases of sexual dysfunction

Clinical Justification

In clinical trials (Bristol Urological Institute (BUI) published in British Journal of Urology International (BJUI) January 2010) the PelvicToner was assessed as ‘not inferior’ to the NICE recommended treatment of Supervised Pelvic Floor Muscle Training (PFMT) but significant additional benefits were noted.

The PelvicToner:

aids the subject to confidently identify the correct muscles - the pubo-coccygeal muscle
ensures an effective exercise regime by providing a resistance that can be varied according to ability
provides positive feedback during exercise activity and reinforces progressive improvements
increases compliance through rapid and measurable improvement

The PelvicToner offers the NHS considerable cost benefits. The recommended treatment options NICE (2004 figures) are:

Urodynamics training £140.00.

Pelvic Floor Muscle Training alone £131.00 on average and up to £168.00.

Pelvic Floor Muscle Training with Biofeedback £166.00.

The PelvicToner offers the equivalent treatment to supervised PFMT plus biofeedback at a cost of £15.00.

In reality, most women do not get the Gold Standard treatment and are just given an exercise sheet.There is no clinical justification or evidence to support this approach. Clinical evidence recognises that the‘exercise sheet approach’ fails most subjects, not least because 30% cannot identify their pelvic floor muscle, improvement may not be noticed for many months, if at all, and compliance is very poor.

Traditional PFMT recommends a three month programme of daily exercise comprising a total of 10 x fast pull-ups and 10x slow pull-ups. Users of the PelvicToner are recommended to start with three sets of ten repetitions at the lowest resistance building to three sets of 50 or more based on personal ambition and ability. As improvement is realised the resistance can be increased in five progressive stages.

The clinical trial compared the two methods on a level playing field so the users of the PelvicToner were restricted to a daily total of 10 x fast pull-ups and 10x slow pull-ups at the lowest resistance. The trial therefore considerably understated the effectiveness of the PelvicToner where, in user trials, over 80% of subjects reported significant improvements in 2 to 4 weeks.

By inference, the PelvicToner is also much more effective than other systems such as expensive electrostimulation devices and vaginal cones or weights which, in clinical trials, are proven inferior to SPFMT and are not recommended by NICE.

Availability

Distributors

Alliance Healthcare
Phoenix Healthcare Distribution
Solution Project Management Ltd (SPM Ltd)

PIP Code 359-4520

More information

Visit www.pelvictoner.info or contact SPM Ltd

"continence service provision is patchy and this sort of product empowers women, gives them better privacy and the prospect of not wasting their time. In our study the PelvicToner aided women to identify their pelvic floor confidently. It increases patient choice and may promote subsequent compliance and sustained efficacy.'' Prof Marcus Drake, BUI (author of BJUI paper).

"It is 60 years since Arnold Kegel proposed pelvic floor exercises as a treatment for stress incontinence but a simple, effective method of putting all his principles into practice has eluded us. The PelvicToner seems to meet all the requirements that Kegel envisaged - it is a simple, patient-friendly, progressive resistance exercise device and provides feedback to the patient that the correct muscles are being engaged.” Paul Abrams, Professor of Urology, BUI

The PelvicToner is registered as a Class 1 medical device (vaginal trainer) under the provisions of the Medical Devices Directive 93/42/EEC

Click here to download a PDF of the NHS Factsheet