Conservative Care for Pelvic Pain (C2P2) in Women Service Members

Participants will watch and discuss a short (5-minute) standardized pain neuroscience education video with their treating provider. The video explains and illustrates how chronic pain is different than acute pain in that it concerns nervous system hypersensitivity more than local tissue damage. Pain neuroscience education principles from the video will then be used to throughout all interventions to coach the participants through graded exposure of activities that may have previously been painful or provoked anxiety.

These motor control exercises will focus on proprioception, coordination, and sensorimotor control training and include progressive exercises that focus on transversus abdominis, lumbar multifidus, diaphragmatic, pelvic floor muscles, and deep hip stabilizers. Exercises will progress from more stabilized (e.g., pelvic tilt, cat and cow) to less stabilized and more dynamic and functional (e.g., forward bending, eccentric squat) to mimic the demands of work duty. Exercise will be trained and progressed during the clinical visits and be performed daily at home.

Thrust and non-thrust manual therapy will be applied to the lumbar facet, sacroiliac, and hip joints based upon the clinical exam in a semi-standardized manner

Dry needling treatment to muscles of the lumbopelvic and upper thigh regions in a semi-standardized manner based upon a palpatory examination. The palpatory examination will include the erector spinae, lumbar multifidi, gluteus medius/minimus, piriformis, illiacus, and hip adductor muscles.

The breathing intervention will start with education describing the link between the diaphragm and the pelvic floor to include awareness of any breath holding patterns and finding positions that facilitate expansion of the ribs, abdominals, and pelvic floor muscles with inhalation. Then progressive training will be given to encourage deep breathing at a pace of approximately 6 breaths per minute.

During the first visit, participants will receive and briefly discuss the 2023 standardized patient educational handout created by the International Pelvic Pain Society with their treating provider. The educational handout describes chronic pelvic pain etiology, typical symptoms, examination, and treatments.

Superficial vulvar, perineal and intravaginal manual therapy and biofeedback utilizing commonly used techniques in previous research selected based on identified impairments from the pelvic floor examination will be performed.