News Release

Women & Infants participating in National Pelvic Floor Disorders Network

Hospital is 1 of only 8 sites selected from across the country

Business Announcement

Care New England

Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island has been selected by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to participate in the national Pelvic Floor Disorders Network (PFDN). Women & Infants is one of just eight medical centers from across the US, and the only one in the Northeast, to work collaboratively to develop and perform research studies related to women with pelvic floor disorders.

Co-principal investigators at Women & Infants are Deborah L. Myers, MD, director, and Vivian Sung, MD, MPH, of the Division of Urogynecology and Reconstructive Pelvic Surgery and faculty at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.

"Pelvic floor disorders are an issue of growing importance, from both an individual and public health point of view," said Dr. Myers. "Participating in such high-level, national research will offer us the opportunity to test and refine the most appropriate treatment protocols for women for generations to come."

The five-year grant from the NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development will enable members of the Network to design and conduct large-scale, high quality studies to significantly advance the care of women with pelvic floor disorders. Studies include treatments and prevention of urinary incontinence, fecal incontinence, pelvic organ prolapse, and other sensory and emptying abnormalities of the lower urinary and gastrointestinal tracts.

The PFDN team aims to learn more about how to help women with pelvic floor problems. Treatments are available, but there are still questions about how best to take care of women with pelvic floor problems. The PFDN was started to study pelvic floor problems and come up with answers to these questions.

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To find out about the open studies in the Pelvic Floor Disorders Network at Women & Infants Hospital, please call Ann Meers, RN, urogynecology research coordinator, at (401) 274-1122, ext. 2811.

About Women & Infants Hospital

Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island, a Care New England hospital, is one of the nation's leading specialty hospitals for women and newborns. A U.S.News Best Hospital in Gynecology and Best Children's Hospital in Neonatology, Women & Infants was ranked number one in the Providence metro area and a top-performer in cancer, and has achieved a 5-star rating in Maternity Care for 2011 from HealthGrades. The primary teaching affiliate of The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University for obstetrics, gynecology and newborn pediatrics, as well as a number of specialized programs in women's medicine, Women & Infants is the seventh largest obstetrical service in the country with more than 8,500 deliveries per year. In 2009, Women & Infants opened the country's largest, single-family room neonatal intensive care unit.

New England's premier hospital for women and newborns, Women & Infants and Brown offer fellowship programs in gynecologic oncology, maternal-fetal medicine, urogynecology and reconstructive pelvic surgery, neonatal-perinatal medicine, pediatric and perinatal pathology, gynecologic pathology and cytopathology, and reproductive endocrinology and infertility. It is home to the nation's only mother-baby perinatal psychiatric partial hospital, as well as the nation's only fellowship program in obstetric medicine.

Women & Infants has been designated as a Breast Center of Excellence from the American College of Radiography; a Center for In Vitro Maturation Excellence by SAGE In Vitro Fertilization; a Center of Biomedical Research Excellence by the National Institutes of Health; and a Neonatal Resource Services Center of Excellence. It is one of the largest and most prestigious research facilities in high risk and normal obstetrics, gynecology and newborn pediatrics in the nation, and is a member of the National Cancer Institute's Gynecologic Oncology Group and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Pelvic Floor Disorders Network.


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