The staff at Phoenix Physical Therapy, PLC wishes you a Happy and Healthy New Year! If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to seek treatment for any forms of what is termed “pelvic floor dysfunction”, our team is ready to help you achieve a happier and more productive life in 2014.

As we close out 2013 we say a fond farewell to our therapist Brooke Love, PT, DPT, BCB-PMD. Brooke is moving forward in her life and career with a transition to Phoenix, AZ and we wish her well. She will be missed. Ushering in 2014, we welcome Megan Abentroth, PT, DPT to our staff. Megan comes to us with a diversity of clinical experience and a doctorate in Physical Therapy from the University of Vermont. Through her experiences, she has developed a passion for pelvic floor therapy and is very excited to be a member of our talented team…welcome Megan!

In this New Year there are many changes occurring in health care and especially within Vermont. Vermont Health Connect is confusing to many Vermonters and you may not be sure of your coverage for physical therapy. Rest assured that our staff is here to help you navigate the new system and understand your physical therapy benefits. We do hope that payment is not a barrier to improving your quality of life. With the New Year comes change and Phoenix Physical Therapy hopes to be a positive part of that change and will work with you and your insurance coverage to make treatment possible for your “pelvic floor muscle dysfunction”.

Many patients ask us what biofeedback training is. Simply put, biofeedback is any physiological process that can be altered due to feedback, either visual or verbal. We use biofeedback every day in our normal routines: we receive biofeedback in the morning when we look in front of the mirror and comb our hair or put on our makeup. The visual picture allows us to make an immediate change to what we see, continuously altering the image in front of us to something we know through experience is the image we want. When you arrive at work, a co-worker remarks that she likes your outfit. This is verbal feedback. Perhaps you adjust your scarf in response to what she tells you.

At Phoenix Physical Therapy we use a form of biofeedback called surface EMG (electromyography) to visualize the function of the pelvic floor muscle which is the muscle responsible for and contributes to the syndromes and causes of incontinence, pelvic pain, elimination disorders, etc. The form of “biofeedback” that is used at Phoenix Physical Therapy involves small electrical signals that are picked up from the pelvic floor muscles which are otherwise hidden in our bodies but under our control. Without a way to visualize these muscles we cannot get a true picture of how these muscles are functioning. The specific functioning of the pelvic floor muscles is what creates a dysfunction and leads to the symptoms that bring you to our clinic. By changing the physiological process of the muscle (biofeedback) we are able to teach our patients lifelong skills to manage and eliminate their symptoms.

Our staff at Phoenix Physical Therapy hold international board certifications in biofeedback allowing us to take the computerized image of your muscle and using specific software, read the image in a way that allows us to teach you ways to change the function of this muscle. In turn, this change in the muscle helps to correct your symptoms and gives you an awareness of what to do to improve your symptoms. Our level of skill in this unique treatment allows us to set the standard for this type of treatment.

If you would like more information on this treatment approach feel free to contact our office.

We are proud of the work we do with patients with pelvic floor muscle dysfunction and have redesigned our website to make it easier for patients and providers to navigate the site and the concept of treatment. We also wanted healthcare providers to understand more fully the treatment strategies we use and the success we have with individual treatments.

Pelvic floor muscle dysfunction can be a difficult problem to diagnose and there are numerous “terms” that are used medically to describe this condition, including (but not limited to): urinary and fecal incontinence, dyspareunia, vaginissmus, vulvodynia, urinary retention, constipation, encopresis, levator ani syndrome, and coccydynia. If you don’t find your “diagnosis” on this site but feel treatment would be of benefit, contact us to discuss further or schedule an appointment for an evaluation.

Looking at our practice as a group of individual providers is helpful to potential patients. Who are we? How did we get involved in treating pelvic floor problems? Nancy Suarez, Brooke Love and I (Jane Kaufman) want you to see who we are and get an idea of what we are like. This concept helps with patient comfort long before the actual treatment is initiated.

Where do we work? By looking at the website you can clearly see we are not your typical “physical therapy practice”. We offer more patient treatment comforts and make a point of working one on one with each individual who is here for pelvic floor muscle dysfunction. We are more like a “spa” than an actual clinic.
Contact us with simple questions, we want to help you! Incontinence, urinary retention, constipation, encopresis, dyspareunia (and more) all affect every aspect of a patient’s life and can interfere with overall quality of life issues. We realize this is a private and potentially embarrassing problem that makes treatment for some hard to pursue. We aim to make you comfortable, give you empowerment to overcome these problems and educate you on the possible and potential outcomes of your individual treatment plan. Our ultimate goal is to help you to the extent we can.

Call us or email us if you haven’t found the information you are looking for or have other questions not answered on this site. We will talk to you in person and make every attempt to answer your questions.

Jane Kaufman, PT, M. Ed., BCB-PMD
President, Phoenix Physical Therapy