Emsella Chair: How It Works for Incontinence, Cost and Results

Emsella is the name BTL, a medical-device company, gives its pelvic-floor chair.

FDA cleared BTL's pelvic-floor chair — model HPM-6000U, 510(k) K162010 — on December 13, 2016, as a non-implanted electrical continence device intended for electromagnetic stimulation of the pelvic floor to treat urinary incontinence in women.

A later version, model HPM-6000UF, was cleared in 2018 for male and female urinary incontinence.

BTL markets the chair under the Emsella name.

One caution on names: FDA's 510(k) documents list model numbers, not brand names.

The match between the cleared models and the Emsella name is inferred from BTL being the applicant, the device type and the timing — we could not find an FDA document that names Emsella, and BTL's own US site does not cite the K-numbers.

The cleared intended use for the 2018 version, in the FDA record's words, is "entirely non-invasive electromagnetic stimulation of pelvic floor musculature for the purpose of rehabilitation of weak pelvic muscles and restoration of neuromuscular control for the treatment of male and female urinary incontinence." In plain terms, the device works on muscle: you sit on the chair while it delivers electromagnetic stimulation to the pelvic-floor muscles.

BTL also makes the Emsculpt body-contouring line, which the company built on the electromagnetic muscle stimulation it brands HIFEM.

The pelvic-floor chair is the same idea aimed at a different muscle group: the cleared use for this chair is the pelvic floor, not the abdomen or buttocks.

The cleared use is urinary incontinence — first in women under the 2016 clearance, and, from the 2018 version on, in men and women alike.

The language of that clearance is about muscle function: rehabilitating weak pelvic muscles and restoring neuromuscular control.

FDA's records for the device list prescription use.

The published study this page draws on enrolled 35 women with stress or mixed incontinence.

Whether the chair fits your own situation, and whether your symptoms fall inside the cleared use, is a question for a licensed provider who has examined you.

What the clearance does not cover matters just as much.

Emsella is not cleared for vaginal tightening, sexual function or the bundle of treatments marketed as vaginal rejuvenation.

In July 2018, FDA warned that lasers and other energy-based devices marketed for "vaginal rejuvenation" have serious risks and lack adequate evidence, and said it had not cleared or approved any device for those uses.

That same month, FDA sent letters about inappropriate "vaginal rejuvenation" marketing to seven device makers — BTL Industries, Emsella's maker, was one of them.

The letters were about marketing claims, not findings of wrongdoing.

BTL's published protocol is the benchmark this page uses.

The company says each session lasts about half an hour — 28 minutes in its own wording — and that a typical course is six sessions, scheduled twice a week.

Those are the manufacturer's figures, not a medical rule.

BTL's site describes a "typical" course; individual practices set their own plans, and your provider's schedule may differ.

If a practice's plan is much longer or more expensive than the six-session benchmark, it is fair to ask why.

BTL also says you can get back to your daily routine right after a session and describes the treatment as needing no recovery time.

That is the manufacturer's description.

Ask your provider what they tell their own patients about the hours after a session.

We could not confirm an independent national price for Emsella from the sources reviewed for this guide, so you will find no dollar figure here.

The honest way to compare practices is in writing, for the full course.

The structure to ask about follows from the protocol: BTL's typical course is six sessions, so the number that matters is what the whole course costs, not one session.

Ask each practice whether it prices the chair per session or as a course package, what the total comes to, and what it charges if you stop before the course ends.

When quotes differ, the structural things to put side by side are how many sessions the provider sets, what the visit includes, and whether the practice bundles the chair with other services.

No national figure covers any of that in the sources we reviewed — which is why a written, line-by-line quote beats an average.

Evidence for Emsella is mostly small uncontrolled studies.

A recent example is a 2024 study of 35 women with stress or mixed incontinence, published in Therapeutics and Clinical Risk Management, in which each participant took a six-session course.

Their scores on the ICIQ-SF incontinence questionnaire fell from 10.2 at baseline to 5.3 after the six sessions, and stood at 4.3 at the one-month follow-up.

Two limits matter when you read those numbers.

First, the study had no sham control group: without a placebo-style comparison, it cannot show how much of the change came from the chair rather than from other factors.

Second, the follow-up ran one month, so this study says nothing about where scores settle a year later.

BTL publishes its own improvement and pad-use figures in its marketing materials.

Those are the manufacturer's numbers, not the peer-reviewed results described above, and this page keeps the two apart.

A note on averages: the study figures above are group averages for 35 women, not a prediction for any one person.

Ask a licensed provider what an evidence base this small and this recent would mean for your case.

When you see the chair advertised under the Emsella name, the questions below apply anywhere.

FDA's records for the device list prescription use.

One of the first things to establish at any practice, then, is who oversees the plan: you want a licensed clinician assessing you, setting the number of sessions and reviewing how they are going.

Our med spa checklist covers the wider questions — credentials, supervision, red flags — that apply to any treatment you book.

Whoever you see, the same rule holds: this chair is a cleared treatment for urinary incontinence, and a use beyond that is not the use FDA cleared.