Speak to one of our representatives by filling the form below.
Urinary incontinence, also known as overactive bladder, makes a person leak urine by accident. This issue is more common in women and can be embarrassing. It can affect your normal daily activities and thus impact the quality of your life.
Although urinary incontinence occurs more frequently in old age, it isn't an unavoidable outcome of aging. If your daily activities are affected due to urinary incontinence don't delay or hesitate to consult your doctor. For many people, medication or simple lifestyle changes can treat urinary incontinence symptoms. This blog explains how to manage urinary incontinence.
You might not feel comfortable while discussing incontinence with your doctor.
But if incontinence is impacting your daily life it's essential to seek medical advice as urinary continence may
Causes include everyday habits, physical issues, and/or underlying medical conditions.
Temporary Urinary Incontinence: Stimulation of the bladder and urine volume increase can be due to several factors such as alcohol, chocolate, caffeine, artificial sweeteners, carbonated drinks, chili peppers, a large dose of vitamin C, foods high in spice, acid, or sugar, blood pressure, and heart medicines, muscle relaxants and sedatives.
An early treatable medical condition may also cause urinary incontinence, such as urinary tract infection or UTI and constipation. While infections can irritate the bladder, constipation can make the nerves overactive (the rectum and bladder are located close to each other and share several nerves).
Persistent Urinary Incontinence: Underlying physical issues/changes can result in this condition. These issues include:
Neurological disorders: Nerve signals involved in controlling the bladder may be interfered with by a stroke, a brain tumor, a spinal injury, multiple sclerosis, or Parkinson’s disease, leading to urinary incontinence.
While women are more prone to having stress incontinence due to pregnancy, childbirth, and menopause, men with prostate gland problems also have an increased risk of overflow and urge incontinence. Old age, obesity, smoking, family history, and certain diseases (neurological or diabetes) also enhance your risk of developing this condition/disease.
The following are some of the risks associated with the Urinary incontinence
Urinary continence is not always preventable, although its risk can be reduced by
Your symptoms often make the doctor understand the type of urinary incontinence you have, which guides the treatment decisions. You go through a history and physical exam and may be asked to do a small maneuver such as coughing to demonstrate incontinence.
The following may then be recommended:
If needed, especially if you’re considering surgery , further tests such as urodynamic testing and pelvic ultrasound may be recommended.
Treatment will depend on different factors such as the type of incontinence, the underlying cause, and the severity of the condition.
Firstly your doctor will advise you of less invasive treatments and move on to other options only when these techniques fail.
Behavioral Techniques
Your doctor may recommend the following:
Bladder training: The aim is to control the urge. You might start by trying to hold off for 10 minutes after there is an urge to do so. The aim is to extend the time between urinary trips until you achieve a gap of 2.5 to 3.5 hours.
Fluid and diet management: You might need to cut back or avoid acidic foods, caffeine, and alcohol, reduce the consumption of liquid, increase physical activity, or lose weight to regain bladder control.
Toilet timetable: Rather than waiting to go to the toilet the person schedules peeing times throughout the day, for example, every two to four hours.
Double voiding: It means urinating then waiting for a couple of minutes and then trying again. This prevents overflow incontinence by training the bladder to empty more completely.
Pelvic Floor Muscle Exercises
Your doctor might suggest you do some exercises to strengthen your pelvic floor muscles, which control urination. Also called Kegel exercises, they are very effective for stress incontinence but they may also help in urge incontinence.
How to do:
Medications
There are different medicines used for calming an overactive bladder, relaxing the bladder muscles, increasing your bladder capacity to hold urine, enhancing your ability to urinate more at a time, making it simpler to empty the bladder, and helping tone and rejuvenate tissues in vaginal and urethra regions.
Electrical stimulation
Electrodes are put for a limited period into your vagina or rectum to strengthen and stimulate pelvic floor muscles. Electrical stimulation can be successful for urge incontinence and stress incontinence. But you may need multiple treatments over the course of several months.
Medical devices
Devices designed to treat women with urinary incontinence include:
Urethral insert: A tiny tampon-like device (disposable) is inserted into the urethra before a particular activity such as tennis that can set off incontinence. It prevents leakage and is taken out before urination.
Pessary: This device (a flexible silicone ring) fits into your vagina and is to be worn all day. It supports the urethra and helps prevent urine leakage. It is also used in women suffering from vaginal prolapse.
Besides, behavioral techniques, medications, medical devices, electrical stimulation, and pelvic floor muscle exercises, other methods include:
Interventional therapies
This will include the following therapies:
Bulking material injections: These involve injecting synthetic material into the tissue surrounding the urethra to keep the urethra closed and lessen the leakage of urine. This therapy is useful for stress incontinence, but is less effective than surgery and may need repetition.
Botox: If other treatment methods have not given desired results, then urge incontinence and an overactive bladder can be dealt with Botox injections into the bladder muscle.
Nerve stimulators: There are two types of devices used for stimulating the sacral nerves (that are involved in bladder control) to control urge incontinence and overactive bladder. They apply painless electrical pulses for stimulating the nerves.
Surgery
Sling procedures: A pelvic sling is created under the urethra and the bladder neck, which works by keeping the urethra closed even as you sneeze or cough. The bladder neck refers to the region of thick muscle where your bladder connects with the urethra.
Prolapse surgery: Prolapse surgery along with a sling procedure is done for women with mixed incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse.
Artificial urinary sphincter: A fluid-filled ring is implanted around your bladder neck. It keeps the urinary sphincter closed until there’s the need to urinate. When you do wish to urinate, you can press a valve implanted under the skin. It’ll deflate the ring and allow urine to flow from the bladder.
Bladder neck suspension: It provides support to the urethra and bladder neck. It involves an incision in the abdomen and is therefore done under spinal or general anesthesia.
In case medical treatments fail to work, you can try pads, protective garments, and catheters to ease the discomfort and inconvenience caused due to urine leakage.
Surgery can be a daunting aspect, and feeling anxious is absolutely normal. The massive amount of information you can get from the internet may confuse you even more. This is where Medfin can help. Leave us the hefty tasks of finding the best hospital, the finest doctor, and the latest procedure at the lowest costs. Let us take charge while you sit back and focus on your health & recovery. Think surgery! Think Medfin!
Insurance Approved
05:30 PM, Wed