Acute Effect of Osteopathic Visceral Mobilization Techniques

Multiple Sclerosis (MS), caused by lesions in the white matter of the central nervous system, is an autoimmune inflammatory demyelinating chronic disease. The disease may present with many findings from fatigue, spasticity, balance and gait disturbances to bladder-bowel dysfunction (Ferreira, A.P.S., et al., 2019). When the rehabilitation methods for incontinence were examined, pelvic floor muscle training, tibial nerve stimulation and sacral neuromodulation were frequently encountered (Rahnama'I, MS., 2020). Pelvic floor muscle training should create an effective result in MS patients, and the training should be done for a long time, such as 8-12 weeks. No study has been found examining the effects of manual therapy techniques and diaphragmatic breathing exercise in the acute phase in functional or neurogenic bladder-intestinal dysfunctions.

The study was planned as a randomized controlled trial. MS patients included in the study will be divided into two groups according to inclusion and exclusion criteria. Diaphragmatic breathing exercises and sacral relaxation, bladder mobilization, which are osteopathic manual therapy techniques, will be applied to the study group. On the other hand, only diaphragmatic breathing exercises will be applied to the control group. Individuals will be treated in a single session. The acute effect of intervention will be examined by making a total of 3 evaluations, pre-intervention, post-intervention, and 1 week after the intervention.