A review of Vaginismus Treatments

Abstract

Introduction: Vaginismus is an involuntary contraction of the vaginal muscles that makes sexual intercourse difficult or impossible. Various treatment strategies have been proposed for vaginismus, such as sex therapy and desensitization. There is no sufficient evidence on the efficacy and effectiveness of vaginismus interventions. This review study was performed with aim to evaluate the effects of different interventions for vaginismus. Methods: In this review study, to find the related articles, the databases of SID, Pubmed, Google scholar, and Science direct were searched using the key words of vaginismus, treatment, and clinical trial from 2002 to 2020. Criteria for selecting a controlled clinical trial were comparison of vaginismus treatments with other treatments, placebo treatment, and routine treatment, or waiting list for treatment. Results: In this study, 15 studies with a total of 655 participants were reviewed. The results of this study showed that cognitive-behavioral therapies, the use of dilators, Botox, sex therapists, and hypnotherapy could successfully treat vaginismus. Regarding the effectiveness of strategies, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) with the highest number of trials has been very successful. After that, the use of dilators was very popular. Conclusion: This study showed that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), the use of vaginal dilators, hypnotherapy, Botox and physiotherapy led to successful and satisfactory intercourse.

Keywords

• clinical trials
• treatment
• vaginismus