Abstract
Pelvic floor disorder, which is a well-known urological disease in postpartum women, progresses due to dropping organs in the pelvis. It was reported that symptoms of pelvic floor disorder had been improved by lifting up the organs using a supportive underwear. In order to establish an appropriate design of a supportive underwear, it is necessary to clarify the relationship of magnitude between pressure of a supportive underwear and elevation of organs. FE model of buttocks was previously developed by image-based modeling technique based on MRI pictures to evaluate the magnitude of elevation of bladder under an application of pressure of an underwear. In this study, we performed FE analysis changing combination of pressure of the underwear to evaluate change in magnitude of elevation of the bladder neck. As results, magnitude of the elevation of bladder neck relatively increased when the pressure of the region from abdomen to pubis decreased and the region from perineum to coccyx increased. Additionally, deformation of the bladder neck was consistent between the simulation results and the previous experimental results, suggesting that our simulation method was valid. Therefore, decrease of the pressure of the region from abdomen to pubis and increasing the pressure of the region from perineum to coccyx are useful for an appropriate design of a supportive underwear.
