Latest Procedures

yellow_arrow

Top Surgeons

red_arrow

Cost Estimates

green_arrow

Second Opinion

yellow_arrow

Insurance Checker

yellow_arrow

Request a call back

Speak to one of our representatives by filling the form below.

Featured treatments

medfin icon

Sling procedure

medfin icon

Bladder Neck Suspension

medfin icon

Prolapse Surgery For UTI

medfin icon

Artificial Urinary Sphincter

medfin icon

Sling procedure

medfin icon

Bladder Neck Suspension

medfin icon

Prolapse Surgery For UTI

medfin icon

Artificial Urinary Sphincter

Overview

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.

What Are The Types Of Urinary Incontinence?

  • Urge incontinence: You have a sudden, extreme urge to urinate followed by a loss of urine involuntarily. You will feel the urge to urinate more frequently, even through the night. Urge incontinence can be caused by a variety of factors, including nerve damage, bladder infections, or neurological conditions such as Parkinson's disease or multiple sclerosis.
  • Stress incontinence: This occurs due to pressure on your bladder by exercising or lifting something heavy, laughing, coughing, or sneezing. This occurs when the pelvic muscles that support the bladder and urethra are weak or damaged, causing urine to leak out during physical activity
  • Functional incontinence: It occurs when the person's unable to go to the toilet in time due to any physical or mental impairment. For example, you may not be able to unbutton your pants in time or walk to the toilet when you feel the urge due to a physical or mental inability.
  • Mixed incontinence: Mixed incontinence is a combination of urge and stress incontinence. It has symptoms of both. Here people may experience urine leakage due to physical activity as well as an uncontrollable urge to urinate.
  • Overflow incontinence: Overflow incontinence takes place when you are not able to empty your bladder completely, resulting in constant or frequent dribbling of urine.

When Will One Need To Consult A Doctor?

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

  • Increase the risk of falls in older people as they rush to the toilet
  • Indicate a more severe underlying condition
  • Cause you to limit social interactions and restrict your normal activities

Causes Of Urinary Incontinence (UI)

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:

  • Pregnancy: Stress incontinence due to hormonal changes and increased weight of the fetus.
  • Childbirth: Vaginal delivery weakens the muscles required for bladder control, can damage the bladder nerves, and cause a dropped (prolapsed) pelvic floor. This prolapse can cause bladder/uterus/rectum/small intestine protrusions into the vagina, causing incontinence.
  • Menopause: Post-menopause, less production of estrogen can prevent the hormone from keeping the lining of the urethra and bladder healthy.
  • Enlarged prostate: Benign prostatic hyperplasia or BPH may cause incontinence in older men.
  • Prostate cancer: It can result in stress or urge incontinence.
  • Changes with age: With the aging of the bladder muscles, its urine-storing capacity can decrease, leading to involuntary bladder contractions. 
  • Obstruction: A tumor in the urinary tract can block the normal urine flow and cause overflow incontinence, while urinary stones in the bladder can lead to urine leakage.

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.

What Are The Associated Risk Factors?

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.

What Are The Complications Associated With Urinary Incontinence?

The following are some of the risks associated with the Urinary incontinence 

  • Urinary tract infections (UTIs): The risk of urinary tract infections is increased due to urinary continence.
  • Skin problems: Constant wetness of your skin due to urinary continence can cause skin infections, rashes, and sores.
  • Impacts on your personal life: Your social, personal, and work relationships can also be impacted as a result of urinary incontinence.

What Are The Methods For Preventing Urinary Incontinence?

Urinary continence is not always preventable, although its risk can be reduced by

  • Eating more fiber-rich food which can prevent constipation, a cause of urinary incontinence.
  • Maintaining a healthy weight, as being overweight or obese can put extra pressure on the bladder and contribute to urinary incontinence
  • Quitting smoking and it can gradually weaken your muscles and lower your immunity as well.
  • Practicing pelvic floor exercises, also known as Kegel exercises to strengthen the pelvic muscles. 
  • Avoiding bladder irritants, such as alcohol, acidic foods, and caffeine.

Diagnosing Urinary Incontinence

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:

  • Urinalysis: The urine sample is checked for infection signs, blood traces, or some other abnormalities.
  • Bladder diary: You need to keep a record of how much you drink, the urine amount produced, when you urinate, the number of incontinence episodes as well as if you had the urge to urinate.
  • Postvoid residual measurement: First you urinate into a container to measure the urine output. Then the doctor checks the leftover urine in your bladder with an ultrasound or catheter. A large amount of leftover urine indicates an obstruction in the urinary tract or an issue with bladder muscles or nerves.

If needed, especially if you’re considering surgery , further tests such as urodynamic testing and pelvic ultrasound may be recommended.

What Is The Treatment For Urinary Incontinence?

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:

  • Contract the muscles that you use for stopping the urine flow, hold for 5 seconds, and then you must relax for 4-5 seconds. 
  • In case you find it difficult, hold it for two seconds and then relax for three seconds.
  • Try to hold these contractions for 10 seconds at a time.
  • Train for at least three sets of 10 repetitions daily.
  • Your doctor may advise you to work with a physical therapist or try biofeedback techniques to help recognize and contract the correct muscles. 

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.

What Are The Other Approaches To Treat Urinary Incontinence?

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.

Why Choose Medfin?

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!

The power of Medfin in patient’s words

shade-circle

“ Got to know about them from my friend. They got an appointment for only 299. Once the doctor confirmed that I needed the surgery they got me a fixed cost which included ALL the costs. No extra amounts were charged. Thank you Medfin”

Suresh Menon Hyderabad 8 days ago
Icon-thumb Recommended our service
shade-circle

“ After my consultation with the doctor, MEDFIN representative got me a fixed package cost that included my mothers initial tests, surgery cost. They also gave me stockings free for Rs. 3000 post the surgery. They kept up their promise they made”

Radhika Iyer Mumbai 8 days ago
Icon-thumb Recommended our service

Why Choose Medfin?

dots why_medfin

Insurance Approved

05:30 PM, Wed
01

Latest procedures

Get access to modern surgical techniques that ensure quicker recovery and better outcomes

02

Expert doctors

Handpicked by Medfin, our expert doctors are trained in the latest, minimally invasive procedures

03

Savings upto 50%

Medfin helps you save upto 50% on your surgery expenses

04

Advanced technology

Get access to modern advanced technology

whatsapp-whiteicon
Book appointment Talk To Expert