The effect of women’s body mass index on pelvic organ prolapse: a systematic review and meta analysis

BACKGROUND: Pelvic organ prolapse remains the public health challenge globally. Existing evidences report the effect of woman’s weight on the pelvic organ prolapse inconsistently and this urges the need of pooled body weight effect on the pelvic organ prolapse. Although there was a previous work on this regard, it included papers reported before June 18/2015. Thus, updated and comprehensive evidence in this aspect is essential to devise strategies for interventions. OBJECTIVE: This review aimed at synthesizing evidence regarding the pooled effect of body weight on the pelvic organ prolapsed. METHODS: For this review, we searched all available articles through databases including PubMed, Web of Sciences, CINAHL, JBI library, Cochran library, PsycInfo and EMBASE as well as grey literature including Mednar, worldwide science, PschEXTRA and Google scholar. We included cohort, case–control, cross-sectional and experimental studies which had been reported between March 30, 2005 to March 30, 2020. In the effect analysis, we utilized random model. The heterogeneity of the studies was determined by I2 statistic and the publication bias was checked by Egger’s regression test. Searching was limited to studies reported in the English language. RESULTS: A total of 14 articles with 53,797 study participants were included in this systematic review (SR) and meta analysis (MA). The pooled result of this Meta analyses depict that body mass index (BMI) doesn’t have statistical significant association with pelvic organ prolapse. CONCLUSION: This review point out that women’s body mass index has no significant effect on the development of pelvic organ prolapse. However, the readers should interpret the result with cautions due to the presence of considerable limitations in this work. Trial registration The protocol of this systematic review (SR) and meta analysis (MA) has been registered in PROSPERO databases with the Registration number of CRD42020186951