Effect of exercises on primary dysmenorrhea : a systematic review / Yasmeen Mahmoud Mohamed Mazroua ; Supervised Amel Mohamed Yousef , Soheir Mahmoud Elkosery , Maya Galal Abdalwahab

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Physical Therapy - Department of P.T. for Gynecology and Obstetrics

Background: Primary dysmenorrhea was defined as a pain which associated with menstrual cycle. It affected 50-90 % of women with regular menstrual cycles. Approximately 10% of these women were in such incredible pain which was one of the most frequent cause of school and job absences. Objective: The review was aiming to establish conclusive evidence on the effectiveness of exercise therapy alone in alleviating pain intensity and pain duration. Methods: An electronic search was performed on the databases of Cochrane database, PubMed, Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro) and google scholar for experimental studies which were published from 2010 to 2021. Also, a manual search for reference lists of included articles was performed. The included were assessed by using the PEDro scale and Sackett{u2019}s scale was used for detection of the level of evidence. Meta-analysis was performed for studies which included for each type of exercises. Results: Twenty studies were included in this review (9 studies of stretching exercises, 4 studies for aerobic exercise, 3 studies for combined exercise, 2 studies for pel vic rocking exercise, one study for isometric exercise, and one study for core stability exercise). The quality assessment of the included eligible studies was from poor to good, with a mean PEDro score of 5.2 from 10. Meta analysis showed that the stretching and pelvic rocking exercises were more effective than the control. Regarding pain duration, the exercises were better than the control. Conclusion: Exercise could be an effective method of treatment of primary dysmenorrhea. There was moderate evidence was concluded that aerobic, combined, core stability and pelvic rocking exercises were better than control, and limited evidence level for stretching and isometric exercises versus control. More high-quality primary studies are needed to confirm this evidence

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