thesisOne in four women in the U.S. will contract a pelvic floor disorder (PFD) in her lifetime. High intra-abdominal pressure (IAP) may be a factor influencing the development of PFDs, causing women at risk for PFDs to receive physical activity restrictions. However, there is limited research as to what daily activities and exercises cause high IAPs. Our lab developed an intravaginal pressure transducer to measure IAP in women during exercise and daily activities, but utilizing the transducer as a long-term measurement device may present compliance issues. Waist-worn accelerometers, which measure acceleration and physical activity, are more commonly utilized devices and may prove to be reliable replacements for the transducer. We hypothesized that there is a positive correlation between the mean maximal vector magnitude for acceleration and the mean maximal IAP and mean area under the curve (AUC) for IAP. After measuring 25 women's IAP and acceleration during specific exercises, we found an R2 of 0.7405 for the relationship between mean maximal accelerometer vector magnitude and mean maximal intra-abdominal pressure and of 0.5255 for the relationship between mean maximal accelerometer vector magnitude and mean area under the curve for intra-abdominal pressure. Analysis of different walking stages presented even higher R2 values, demonstrating that waist-worn accelerometers may present a viable method for predicting IAP
