English

Abstract

Parturition has profound effect on the pelvic floor muscles and is associated with mechanical or neurological injuries. In most women, this effect is transitory, however in a few, permanent damage occurs in the form of urinary or fecal incontinence, fistulae, and sexual problems. often very little attention is paid on to these problems postnataly and few women volunteer to inform about these. Therefore, the true incidence of the problem is unknown. We conducted a study to correlate the various risk factors with the degree of perianal injury caused by the mode of delivery and episiotomy on the anal sphincter. Until recently, defects of external anal sphincter (EAS) were detected by electromyography and internal anal sphincter (IAS) by measurement of low resting anal pressure. This study uses the transperineal ultrasonography (TPUS). TPUS assesses the anal sphincter under more physiological condition with no intra anal probe like anal endosonography so also demonstrate the internal anal cushion (mucosa & submucosa) of the resting canal. TPUS gives accurate images of both sphincter muscles, leading to recognition of unsuspected defects of external