A gynecological perspective of interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome may offer cure in selected cases

INTRODUCTION: Recent publications of interstitial cystitis (IC)/bladder pain syndrome cure by a gynecological prolapse protocol, run counter to traditional treatments such as bladder installations which do not offer such cure. The prolapse protocol, uterosacral ligament (USL) repair, is based on the ‘Posterior Fornix Syndrome’ (PFS). PFS was described in the 1993 iteration of the Integral Theory. PFS comprises predictably co-occurring symptoms of frequency, urgency, nocturia, chronic pelvic pain, abnormal emptying and post-void residual urine, caused by USL laxity and cured or improved by repair thereof. MATERIAL AND METHODS: analysis and interpretation of published data showing cure of IC by USL repair. RESULTS: In many women, USL pathogenesis of IC can be explained by the effect of weak or loose USLs weakening two pelvic muscles which contract against them, levator plate (LP) and conjoint longitudinal muscle of the anus (LMA). The now weakened pelvic muscles cannot stretch the vagina sufficiently to prevent afferent impulses from urothelial stretch receptors ‘N’ reaching the micturition centre where they are interpreted as urge. The same unsupported USLs cannot support the visceral sympathetic/parasympathetic visceral autonomic nerve plexuses (VP). The pathway of multiple referred pelvic pains is explained as follows: groups of afferent VP axons stimulated by gravity or muscle movements fire off ‘rogue’ impulses, which are interpreted by the cortex as end-organ chronic pelvic pain (CPP) from several end organs; this explains how CPP is invariably perceived in several sites. Reports of cure of non-Hunner’s and Hunner’s IC are analysed with diagrams which explain co-occurrence of IC with urge and phenotypes of chronic pelvic pain from several different sites. CONCLUSIONS: A gynecological schema cannot explain all IC phenotypes, especially male IC. However, for those women who obtain relief from the predictive speculum test, there is a significant possibility of cure of both the pain and the urge by uterosacral ligament repair. In this context, it may well be in such female patients’ interests, at least in the exploratory diagnostic phase, for ICS/BPS to be subsumed into the PFS disease category. It would give such women a significant chance of cure, something denied to them for now.