Vaginal Cone Use in Passive and Active Phases in Patients with Stress Urinary Incontinence and a Study on Effective Sterilization of Vaginal Cone

The present study was conducted to determine the effect of detergent washing, boiling water, surgical spirit and autoclave in sterilizing the vaginal cone which is used for the patients with pelvic floor dysfunction. Using simple random sampling method based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. Twenty four patients were selected from Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Saveetha Medical College and Hospital, Chennai. Twenty-four women with a clinical and urodynamic diagnosis of stress urinary incontinence were treated with sterile vaginal cones in a passive phase (without voluntary contractions of the pelvic floor) and an active phase (with voluntary contractions), each of which lasted three months. Clinical complaints, a functional evaluation of the pelvic floor, a pad test, and bladder neck mobility were analyzed before and after each phase. Three out of the twenty four samples which was collected after detergent washing showed growth and rest of the samples were inactive. Streptococcus pyogens were the predominant isolated bacteria found. The samples done with boiling water, ethanol and autoclave did not show any growth at all. This study also concludes that the boiling water, ethanol and autoclave can be used for vaginal cone sterilization. Twenty-one patients completed the treatment. The reduction in absolute risk with the pad test was 0.38 (p, 0.034) at the end of the passive phase and 0.67 (p, 0.0001) at the end of the active phase.