Virtual reality, dance and fun are not the first things that come to mind when we think of treating urinary incontinence in senior women. However, these concepts were the foundations of a promising study by Dr. Chantal Dumoulin, PhD, Canada Research Chair in Urogynaecological Health and Aging, a researcher at the Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal, and an associate professor in the Physiotherapy Program of the Rehabilitation School at Université de Montréal, and her master's student, Miss Valérie Elliott.

Dr Eling D. de Bruin, Ph.D., researcher at the department of Health Sciences and Technology, Swiss federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland collaborated in this study for his expertise in the use of exergame in geriatric rehabilitation. The results of their feasibility study were published in Neurourology and Urodynamics.

For the study, the researchers added a series of dance exercises via a video game console to a physiotherapy program for pelvic floor muscles. What were the results for the 24 participants? A greater decrease in daily urine leakage than for the usual program (improvement in effectiveness) as well as no dropouts from the program and a higher weekly participation rate (increase in compliance).

Research from Queen Mary University of London reveals women over the age of 50 who don't attend cervical screening are four times more likely to be diagnosed with cervical cancer in later life.

The study, published in PLoS Medicine and funded by Cancer Research UK, underlines the importance of screening women over 50 for cervical cancer to prevent the disease, and provides the evidence that women with normal screening results between 50- 64 have a lower risk of cervical cancer into their eighties.

Researchers examined data taken from 1,341 women who were screened aged 50 to 64 and the number of cervical cancers diagnosed between 65 to 83. They included nearly all 65 to 83-year old women in England and Wales diagnosed with cervical cancer between 2007 and 2012.
Women who had not been screened after 50 had a six fold higher risk of being diagnosed with cervical cancer than those who had been screened but had a normal result during this time - with 49 cancers being diagnosed per 10,000 unscreened women over 20 years, compared to eight cancers per 10,000 women with normal screening results.

Women who had been screened regularly but had a positive (abnormal) screening result between 50 and 64 had a risk of 86 per 10,000 women over 20 years.