Feasibility of Virtual Qigong Videos as Adjunctive Treatment for Chronic Pelvic Pain Patients

Background and/or Objectives: To gather preliminary feasibility data to determine if virtual qigong (traditional Chinese movement-based mind-body practice) videos can be an effective adjunctive treatment in the holistic approach to chronic pelvic pain management.

Design: Randomized, feasibility study

Setting : Patient home

Participants : 24 subjects randomly assigned to the qigong intervention (n=12) or control/standard of care (which includes pelvic floor physical therapy) (n=12) groups.

Interventions: Assessed if chronic pelvic pain patients would utilize virtual qigong video at least five days weekly for four weeks in their own home in addition to standard of care management, which includes pelvic floor physical therapy.

Main Outcome Measures: Feasibility outcomes including 1) Acceptability: recruitment ease, patient satisfaction, and intent to continue use. 2) Demand: actual qigong video use. 3) Implementation: identification of factors affecting difficulty of using qigong videos.

Results: Compared to previously published a priori feasibility benchmarks, we had a “very good” recruitment rate of 77.4% of patients to the study, and a poor drop out rate of 41.67% patients enrolled. Subjects in the qigong group had “excellent” satisfaction (85.7%) utilizing the videos and reported it was a positive and helpful experience. Among the 14 participants who completed the study, there was “excellent” adherence (100%) to all study components. There was “good” to “excellent” adherence (>70%) of qigong video use in the first 3 weeks of the intervention. 2 of 7 participants reported pain or concurrent illness as a barrier to utilizing the qigong videos.

Conclusions: Virtual qigong videos are a feasible intervention to use in a future randomized control trial. Future studies could investigate if a clinically meaningful reduction in pain intensity and enhanced functional capacity can be achieved among chronic pelvic pain patients using qigong videos as an adjunct to standard of care treatments.