Emsella

How We Do Emsella in Cambridge

Emsella at Bromberg Chiropractic is a chair. You sit on it, fully clothed, for 28 minutes, in a private room in the same first-floor office at 201 Broadway where Dr. Bromberg has practiced for more than 40 years. The chair uses HIFEM, a high-intensity focused electromagnetic field, to contract the pelvic floor muscles about 11,000 times in a single session. These are contractions you could not produce voluntarily, in number or in strength, which is the point: the pelvic floor is a muscle group that most people cannot train effectively on their own, and a weak one is the most common reason adults leak urine.

The standard protocol is six sessions over three weeks, two a week, and it is used for men and women. The wellness side of the practice has its own site at brombergwellness.com, but the room, the phone and the doctor are the same, and Dr. Bromberg supervises every course.

What he looks for at the consultation is the kind of leakage you have, because that shapes what to expect. Stress incontinence, the leak that happens with a cough, a sneeze, a laugh or a run along the Charles, is the problem the chair is best known for. Urge incontinence, the sudden need that does not give you time, and mixed patterns respond too, with somewhat more variation. He asks about childbirth, menopause, prostate surgery, previous pelvic surgery, and the things that keep a bladder irritated regardless of muscle strength, such as caffeine, constipation and a chronic cough. He also asks about your back, because the pelvic floor is the floor of the core, and a long-standing low back or sacroiliac problem often travels with it.

That is where it fits with the rest of the practice. A patient with pelvic floor weakness and a pelvis that is not moving well may combine Emsella with adjustments. A patient rebuilding the whole core after pregnancy may pair it with EMSculpt NEO for the abdominal wall. People who are already doing pelvic floor exercises or working with a pelvic floor physical therapist keep doing that; the chair adds to it rather than replacing it. For a plain explanation of the technology, read our post on Emsella and incontinence.

What Your Visits Look Like

The first visit is a consultation. There is no internal examination here; it is a conversation and a screening. Dr. Bromberg takes a health history, asks about the leakage in specific terms (when it happens, how often, how many pads a day, how many times you are up at night), and screens for the conditions that rule the chair out. He tells you honestly whether he expects it to help, and if your history suggests a problem that needs a physician first, he says so and refers you before anything is booked.

A treatment session could not be simpler. You sit on the chair in your normal clothes, positioned so the pelvic floor is centered over the applicator in the seat. The intensity is raised gradually over the first minutes to a level you can tolerate comfortably. What you feel is a tingling and a deep, rhythmic contraction in the pelvic floor; most people describe it as strange rather than painful. You can read or look at your phone. After 28 minutes you stand up and carry on with your day. There is nothing to recover from. Many Kendall Square patients come over on a lunch break and go back to work.

Six sessions over three weeks means two visits a week, spaced a few days apart, which the office schedules around its Monday, Wednesday and Friday hours. Keeping the rhythm matters, because the sessions build on each other.

Progress is measured in the simplest way possible: a leakage diary. Episodes per day, pads per day, nights up, and whether the activity that used to cause a leak still does. Dr. Bromberg asks at each visit and compares to where you started. Most people notice a change within the first few sessions, and the honest assessment of the course happens at the sixth and again a few weeks later, once the muscle has had time to consolidate.

What to Expect: Results and Timelines

Realistically, expect fewer leaks and better control, building across the three weeks and continuing to improve for a few weeks after the last session. For stress incontinence the change is often clear early. For urge and mixed patterns, improvement is common but less uniform, because urgency is partly a bladder signal problem and not only a muscle problem. Like any strengthening, the result fades without maintenance; the FAQ on this page covers how long it typically lasts and how maintenance sessions are used.

What slows it down is mostly outside the chair. Bladder irritants such as caffeine and alcohol. Constipation, which loads the pelvic floor every day. A chronic cough or heavy lifting that keeps straining it. Higher body weight. Missed sessions that break the rhythm. Dr. Bromberg will talk through these at the consultation, because six sessions cannot out-train a habit that undoes them daily.

If six sessions have not helped, he tells you, and he does not sell a second course as the default answer. The next step is a referral: to a urologist, a urogynecologist, or a pelvic floor physical therapist, depending on the picture. Some bladders leak for reasons that no amount of muscle strength fixes, and those need a different kind of care.

Some things need a physician before any wellness treatment, and he screens for them. Blood in the urine. Pain or burning with urination. Repeated urinary infections. Incontinence that started suddenly, especially together with new back pain, numbness in the saddle area or leg weakness, which can signal a spinal emergency and belongs in the emergency department. A pelvic organ prolapse that is causing symptoms. None of these is treated with a chair, and he will send you to the right place first.

Who It Is For, and Who It Is Not For

Emsella is for women with stress incontinence after childbirth or through and after menopause, for women and men with urge or mixed incontinence that has not responded to pelvic floor exercises, for men regaining control after prostate surgery, and for anyone whose pelvic floor weakness is affecting intimacy or core stability. It is a reasonable option for people who have been told to do Kegels and either cannot find the muscle or cannot keep up with the routine. It is also used by patients who simply want a stronger pelvic floor before a problem starts, for example in the later stages of postpartum recovery once cleared by their obstetric provider.

Some exclusions are absolute. It is not done during pregnancy. It is not done for anyone with a pacemaker, an implanted defibrillator or another implanted electronic device. Metal implants in or near the pelvis and hips, certain pelvic implants, and recent pelvic surgery rule it out or require clearance first. This is not an exhaustive medical list; the screening at your consultation is, so if anything in your history makes you unsure, ask there rather than assuming either way.

The honest limits: the chair strengthens muscle. It does not repair a prolapse that needs surgical attention, it does not treat an infection, and it does not fix a bladder that leaks because of a neurological condition or an obstruction. Where the problem is muscle weakness, which is most of the time, it does its job. Where it is not, Dr. Bromberg will tell you and point you to the right specialist.

Cost, Insurance and Booking

Emsella is an elective wellness treatment. Insurance does not cover it, and the benefits verification we do for chiropractic care does not apply to it. It is sold as the standard course of six sessions, and the office quotes the current price for that course by phone at (617) 494-1166. We do not publish the figure here because it changes, and because the quote should come with a conversation about whether the chair is the right answer for you. Chiropractic care, if you are also receiving it, is billed separately, per visit, through your health plan as usual; see our insurance page.

No referral is needed. Call to book a consultation, or walk in during office hours and ask; if the room is free we can often talk the same day, and consultations are generally available the same week. Hours are Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 8am to 1pm and 3pm to 6pm. The consultation and the sessions happen in a private room, and because you stay fully clothed, there is nothing to prepare for or change into.

The office is at 201 Broadway, first floor, a six-minute walk up Broadway from the Kendall/MIT Red Line station and about ten minutes from Lechmere on the Green Line. There is free street parking and metered parking on Broadway and the side streets. The new patient page covers what to expect on a first visit, and the Emsella pages at brombergwellness.com go deeper on the specific problems the chair is used for.