The following post comes to us from long-time faculty member Dawn Sandalcidi PT, RCMT, BCB-PMD! Dawn is a figurehead in the world of pediatric pelvic floor, she teaches Pediatric Incontinence and Pelvic Floor Dysfunction (available three times in 2016) and she just completed the 2nd edition of the Pediatric Pelvic Floor Manual!! Today Dawn is sharing her insights an urotherapy for pediatric patients.

If you read any papers on pediatric bowel and bladder dysfunction you will often come across the word "urotherapy". It is by definition a conservative based management based program used to treat lower urinary tract (LUT) dysfunction using a variety of health care professionals including the physician, Physical Therapists, Occupational Therapists and Registered Nurses.

Basic urotherapy includes education on the anatomy and function of the LUT, behavior modifications including fluid intake, timed or scheduled voids, toilet postures and avoidance of holding maneuvers, diet, bladder irritants and constipation. This needs to be tailored to the patients’ needs. For example a child with an underactive bladder needs to learn how to sense urge and listen to their body and a child who postpones a void needs to be on a voiding schedule. Urotherapy alone can be helpful however a recent study demonstrated a statistically significant improvement in uroflow, pelvic floor muscle electromyography activity during a void, urinary urgency, daytime wetting and reduced post void residual (PVR) in those patients who received pelvic floor muscle training as compared to Urotherapy alone. This is great news for all of us who are qualified to teach pelvic floor muscle exercise!

The Pelvic Rehab Report had an opportunity to interview Dawn Sandalcidi, the creator and instructor of "Pediatric Incontinence and Pelvic Floor Dysfunction". Dawn has developed a pediatric dysfunctional voiding treatment program in which she lectures on nationally. Dawn has published articles in the Journal of Urologic Nursing, the Journal of Manual and Manipulative Therapy, and the Journal of Women’s Health Physical Therapy. Let's hear more from Dawn about her Pediatric Incontinence and Pelvic Floor Dysfunction course!

What essential skill does your course add to a practitioner’s toolkit?

Adding pediatrics to your practice truly allows you to treat the pelvic floor through the lifespan. If you are a pediatric therapist adding this most important specialty will complete the picture of your entire patient.

This post was written by H&W instructor Dawn Sandalcidi, PT, RCMT, BCB-PMD. Dawn's course that she wrote on "Pediatric Incontinence" will be presented in in South Caroline this August.

Years ago when my oldest daughter was 4 years old and in Pre-school I received an urgent call at the office that she had an accident. Immediately my head began to race, “What hospital is she in?” “What did she break?” Then the director informed me she wet her pants. I collapsed in my chair with a huge sense of relief and I began to ponder “Did she have an ‘accident’ or did her bladder leak?

Merriam-Webster defines an accident as:

This post was written by H&W instructor Dawn Sandalcidi, PT, RCMT, BCB-PMD. Dawn's course that she wrote on "Pediatric Incontinence" will be presented in in South Caroline this August.

I will never forget the morning I was called by one of my referring pediatricians to tell me an 11-year-old boy with fecal incontinence hung himself because his siblings ridiculed him. If you ever ask me why I do what I do, I will tell you so that nothing like that would ever happen again.

When we think of pediatric bowel and bladder issues we primarily focus on the physiologic issue itself and treating the underlying pathology. I think it is imperative to teach a child that she/he did not have a leak but their bladder or bowel had a leak. It makes the incident a physiological problem and not a problem of the child.