This is an original study that aims to evaluate the prevalence of lumbopelvic pain in women with overactive bladders (OAB). Thus this study's hypothesis is that there is in fact a relationship between lumbopelvic pain and OAB. However, there still is a lack of studies that evidence this relationship, emphasizing the relevance of the current study.

This is a descriptive, observational, transversal study that has as its target population, women with overactive bladder (OAB). In order to evaluate the prevalence of lower back pain in women with OAB, 26 patients were evaluated, of which nine were part of the control group (CG), and 17 were part of the intervention group (IG). Participants were included in the IG if they had a clinical complaint of OAB and urgency symptoms, as proven by a voiding diary and the International Consultation on Incontinence Questionnaire Overactive Bladder (ICIQ-OAB) questionnaire. Patients were excluded from the study if they were younger than 18 years old, had a urinary tract infection, a diagnosis of bladder cancer, any gynecological or pelvic disorders, any orthopedic or neurological disease, use of prosthetics or orthoses, presence of any bladder obstruction, or use of anticholinergic treatment for overactive bladder with tricyclic antidepressants, alpha-blockers, or adrenergic agonists during the study or two weeks before its beginning. The sample size calculation was done with the WINPEPI calculator and estimated a sample size of 78 patients with a standard deviation of 13.3 and acceptable difference of 3, and a statistical significance of 5%. Results presented include preliminary data of 26 patients as this is an ongoing study. Patients were sent home with a three-day voiding diary; after evaluation of the diary, patients would answer the Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) for lower back pain. The ODI score indicates the level of the patient's dysfunction due to pain, categorized as minimal dysfunction, moderate dysfunction, severe dysfunction, physically disabled, or bedridden. All participants provided written informed consent. The elaboration of the database and statistical analysis was developed with the use of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, EUA) 17.0 software for Windows®. The chi-squared test was used for the statistical analysis of the sociodemographic, categorical variables of the study's participants, and the Mann Whitney-U test was used for the analysis of the Oswestry index for lower back pain average scores, presented in boxplot form.

Twenty-six women were evaluated, nine from the CG and 17 from the IG, with a median (IQ) age of 21.0 (21.0 - 32.5) and 53.0 (37.5 - 62.5) years, respectively (p = 0.082). The prevalent schooling level in both groups was a high school degree, with two (66.7%) participants having completed high school in the CG and nine (69.2%) in the IG (p = 0.577) (Table 1). As for urinary symptoms, five (38.5%) women in the IG reported having stress urinary incontinence, and nine (69.2%) reported having urgency urinary incontinence as compared to none of the participants in the control group reporting any incontinence (p = 0.509, 0.063) (Table 1). In regards to the ODI, three patients in the CG (50%) reported minimal disability due to lower back pain as compared to 10 (76.9%) patients in the IG (p = 0.654) (Table 1; Graph 1). Furthermore, no patients of the CG reported moderate or severe disability due to lower back pain as compared to two (15.4%) patients who reported moderate disability and one (7.7%) that reported severe disability in the IG (p = 0.654) (Table 1; Graph 1).

Given the analyzed criteria, it can be observed that there was no statistical significance in the association of lumbopelvic pain and OAB. These results do not support previous studies with larger populations that successfully established a statistically and clinically significant relationship between lumbopelvic pain and OAB (1). Furthermore, physiologic studies also demonstrate a relationship between lumbopelvic and genitourinary innervation, suggesting a relationship between these structures (2).

After analyzing the study's results, it is worth mentioning that these are preliminary results, which may explain why they do not support the conclusions of previous studies about the topic (1). Nonetheless, it becomes necessary, the development of a study with a larger population sample, so that more reliable results can be presented.

KAPTAN, H; KULAKSIZOGLU, H; KASIMCAN, O; SECKIN, B. The Association between Urinary Incontinence and Low Back Pain and Radiculopathy in Women. Journal of Medical Sciences. Vol 4. Republic of Macedonia, 2016.
KAVIA, RB; DASGUPTA, R; FOWLER, CJ. Functional imaging and the central control of the bladder. J Comp Neurol. 2005;493:27-32.