| Abstract [eng] |
SUMMARY Aim: The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the various postnatal rehabilitation programmes used in Europe, to define the importance of postnatal rehabilitation for women's health, to summarise good practices in European countries and to compare them with the current situation in Lithuania. Relevance: Various complications after childbirth are common and limit women's daily physical activity and social life. Postnatal rehabilitation is beneficial for women's postnatal recovery, but there is a lack of adequate visual and practical information on postnatal recovery from medical professionals, both worldwide and in Lithuania. Methods: The literature search was conducted in December 2024 using the PubMed database search engine. The aim of the literature search was to find recent literature on postnatal rehabilitation strategies in European countries. During the search, the keywords „European countries“ (as well as the name of each country separately), „postnatal rehabilitation“ and their synonyms were used in order to find articles describing European postnatal rehabilitation strategies. The search was carried out in 2 stages: a regular search using keywords and their synonyms and an advanced search using MeSH terms. After removing incomplete publications older than 2015 written in languages other than Lithuanian and English, 212 references were found. Literature was further screened according to inclusion and exclusion criteria. After reading the titles and abstracts, removing duplicate articles, 77 articles were selected based on keywords, inclusion and exclusion criteria. After full-text analysis, 40 sources were excluded according to the above criteria. The literature review included 37 sources of scientific literature. Conclusions: 1. Postnatal rehabilitation has been introduced in Europe for quite some time, and in most countries women are informed about postnatal rehabilitation at the time of discharge from hospital after delivery or at the time of the postnatal follow-up visit. In most countries, postnatal rehabilitation is funded for symptomatic patients and includes strengthening of abdominal and pelvic floor muscles and management of other physiological changes. In some countries, postnatal rehabilitation is defined in national midwifery guidelines. 2. Postnatal rehabilitation is an important process for women's health and is designed to improve women's physical and psychological health. Postnatal rehabilitation helps to reduce symptoms of pelvic floor dysfunction, abdominal rectus muscle diastasis, lumbar pain and can have a positive impact on negative psychological changes after childbirth. 3. European countries have different attitudes towards postnatal rehabilitation and access to services than Lithuania. In Lithuania, there is a lack of sufficient awareness of postnatal rehabilitation options and these services are mainly provided in the private sector, while there are no goverment-funded postnatal rehabilitation programmes. |
