Urology Biofeedback Therapy

Biofeedback helps your child understand how their body works. It teaches them how to control parts of their body they do not think about being able to control. During biofeedback, a computer is used to measure, record and display information about a body process.

How Biofeedback is Used in Urology

In pediatric urology biofeedback, we teach your child to retrain the pelvic floor muscles (pee muscles). These muscles help the bladder store and empty urine. When these muscles are tight, the bladder stores urine without leaking. When the muscles are relaxed, the bladder can empty. These muscles are supposed to be tight some of the time and relaxed at other times. Children who have tight muscles all the time tend to hold their pee and do not relax. This causes them to not fully empty their bladder. Biofeedback is used to teach children how to relax their pelvic floor muscles so their bladder can empty completely.

Biofeedback therapy is offered as a treatment option for children who:

strain to pee
do not fully empty their bladder
have a lot of urinary tract infections
pee with a start-stop-start pattern
pee with a long flow without much force

What Happens During the Therapy Session

During a biofeedback session, stickers are placed on your child’s belly, knee and
buttocks. These stickers have wires connected to a computer. The wires send signals
to the computer telling it how well the pelvic floor muscles squeeze and relax. This
information is turned into moveable pictures that your child can see on the computer.
By seeing these changes, your child learns what their muscles are doing. As they
change what their muscles are doing, the feedback on the computer also changes.
These exercises help your child learn to control their pelvic floor (pee) muscles, even
when they are not hooked up to the computer. The overall goal is to improve your
child’s ability to store urine and empty their bladder.

Either before or after therapy, we will ask the child to pee while the stickers and wires
are connected to the computer. This tells us how well the child is emptying the
bladder as we go through therapy. Please have your child come to each therapy
session with a comfortably full bladder by drinking about 6 to 8 ounces of water
before they arrive.

How Many Biofeedback Sessions Children Need

Each child is different. Usually, children need 3 to 5 sessions to learn how to relax
their pelvic floor muscles and improve emptying their bladder. The more they practice
at home, the sooner this happens. Home exercises will be reviewed at the first therapy
session.

Urology Biofeedback Therapy (PDF)