Whole body vibration therapy on a treatment bed as additional means to treat postprostatectomy urinary incontinence

Prostate cancer is a massive burden with an enormous impact on health and the main malignancy in men in industrialized countries. The recent advances in prostate cancer therapy in all fields of interdisciplinary treatment have created a favorable prognosis with 5‑year survival rates of approximately 99 % for patients, making prostate cancer a chronic disease with various side-effects affecting quality of life [ 1 ]. Although nerve-sparing surgical techniques in radical prostatectomies are improving, a significant portion of men will experience (early) incontinence [ 2 ]. The surgical treatment of postprostatectomy stress urinary incontinence remains the gold standard procedure [ 3 ]. Nevertheless, modalities from the field of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation have been described to serve as additive noninvasive treatment options and to be able to help patients in regaining continence [ 4 ]. Such programs for pelvic floor re-education include physical modalities like physiotherapeutic exercises (pelvic floor training), biofeedback (and electro- and multichannel biofeedback), as well as whole body vibration therapy, and have been shown to be efficacious and well-accepted in inpatient rehabilitation programs [ 2 ]. Nevertheless, it had been shown that a continuous improvement in continence also depends on the consistent continuation of an outpatient program [ 2 ]. Whole body vibration therapy, especially synchronous high-intensity whole body vibration therapy of long duration, has been proven to be effective in incontinent patients [ 4 ]. In this case report, a new form of whole body vibration therapy on a therapeutic bed to treat the disabling and isolating symptom “incontinence” is presented.