PURPOSE: To evaluate the effectiveness of an illustrated home exercise guide targeting the pelvic floor muscles in promoting urinary continence during pregnancy. METHODS: A randomized clinical trial was performed with 87 participants, evaluated six times during pregnancy and divided into three groups: Gsup, supervised; Gobs, not supervised, and Gref, women who did not perform the home exercises program. A miction diary and perineometry were used to evaluate urinary incontinence (primary outcome) and pelvic floor muscle strength (secondary outcome), respectively. The Kruskal-Wallis test with post hoc Dunn's and Chi-square and z tests with Bonferroni correction were used for continuous variables and proportions, respectively, with the level of significance set at 5%. RESULTS: At the end of the study, 6.9% of pregnant women in the Gsup and Gobs had urinary incontinence, while 96.6% of Gref women were incontinent. Regarding pelvic floor muscle function, Gsup and Gobs had mean contractions of 10 and 8.9 cmH2O, respectively, while Gref had a value of 4.7 cmH2O. Both results were significant. CONCLUSION: An illustrated home exercise guide targeting the pelvic floor muscles is effective in promoting urinary continence during pregnancy, even without permanent supervision. ClinicalTrials.gov registry -- NCT00740428.

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