Study on the therapeutic effect of floating needle therapy combined with pressing acupoint embedding for female stress urinary incontinence after childbirth: a randomized trial

Background: Stress urinary incontinence is a common and widespread problem among women that can significantly reduce the quality of life of those affected and potentially result in limitations to the lives and activities of their friends and family members. We aimed to observe the effect of floating needle therapy combined with acupuncture point embedding in the treatment of female stress urinary incontinence after childbirth.Methods: A total of 64 postpartum female stress urinary incontinence patients who were treated and hospitalized in the Urology Clinic of the Ningbo Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital of the Zhejiang Province from September 2020 to August 2021 were randomly allocated to the experimental group and the control group, each with 32 cases. The control group was treated with the drug midodrine combined with Kegel training, and the experimental group was treated with floating needle therapy combined with acupoint embedding. After 8 weeks of continuous treatment, the pelvic floor muscle strength, urinary incontinence score, and the improvement of urine leakage in the 1 h pad test were observed. We then evaluated the clinical efficacy of the 2 groups and the state of urinary incontinence at 3 months and 6 months as assessed by telephone follow-up.Results: After treatment, the pelvic floor muscle strength of the 2 groups had significantly increased, and both the urinary incontinence score and the urine leakage volume of the 1 h pad test were significantly reduced. The pelvic floor muscle strength of the experimental group was significantly higher than that of the control group after treatment, the urinary incontinence score and the amount of urine leakage of the 1 h pad test were significantly lower than those of the control group. The total effective rate of the experimental group was 90.63% (27/32), which was higher than that of the control group (71.88%, 23/32).Conclusions: With the benefits of being both convenient and efficient, floating needle therapy combined with press-needle acupoint embedding is effective in treating female stress urinary incontinence after childbirth.Trial registration: Chinese Clinical Trial Registry ChiCTR2100047558.