InControl Medical Wins FDA Clearance for Attain: The First Over-the-Counter, At-Home Device for the Treatment of Urinary and/or Fecal Incontinence in Women

InControl Medical wins FDA clearance for new Attain, the first over-the-counter (OTC) non-implantable muscle stimulator designed for at-home use to help treat the approximately 60 million women in the U.S. suffering with stress, urge, mixed urinary incontinence and/or bowel incontinence. This is good news for all those affected by urinary and/or involuntary bowel leakage that can increase with age: 20% -30% of young women, 30%-40% of middle-aged women, and up to 50% of older women suffer from incontinence. It’s time to talk about this taboo topic before diapers become the newest accessory in the Nike store. So, strengthen your calves and abs, but don’t forget to strengthen your pelvic floor muscles too, says Lauren Streicher, M.D., Medical Director of the Northwestern Medicine Center for Sexual Health and Menopause and Clinical Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Northwestern University. All kidding aside, many of my patients who suffer with urinary incontinence, can also have leaky bowel, and truly suffer in silence and embarrassment. Post-partum, anal or rectal cancer, and the natural aging process can cause incontinence. Thankfully, many patients respond well to pelvic-floor electrical stimulation and biofeedback as a first-line treatment, before considering surgery or medication. Attain is a small, painless, easy to use medical device for women to self-treat in the privacy of their own home, reducing or eliminating the need for pads or diapers. Read more.

Source: Global Banking & Finance Review, March 26, 2019

Pelvic Floor Muscle Exercises

This is a diagram of the male pelvic floor. Men and women can both do pelvic floor muscle exercises to help strengthening the muscles located in their pelvic floors to help control urine leakage.

Pelvic floor muscle exercises make the pelvic floor muscles stronger. Strengthening these muscles may help you have more control over leaking urine during times of physical stress, such as laughing, coughing, or sneezing. These exercises are often referred to as Kegel exercises.

Everyone has a pelvic floor. The pelvic floor is a group of muscles that form a hammock shape in your pelvis. Pelvic floor muscles hold up the pelvic organs and keep them in the right place. In women these organs are the uterus, bowel and bladder. In men the same muscles hold the bowel and bladder. The muscles of the pelvic floor can become weak and can start to sag. This can happen because of injuries, pregnancy, childbirth, or surgery (including prostate surgery and hysterectomies). The muscles can also become weaker from carrying extra weight, or from chronic coughing. Continue reading→

Electric Stimulation of the Pelvic Floor Muscles

During electric stimulation (or e-stim for short), sticky pads are stuck to the skin around the vagina or a little piece of plastic is placed into the vagina or rectum. A very small amount of electricity goes into this pad or piece of plastic and makes the muscles move and contract. These contractions are exercises for the pelvic floor muscles. With these exercises, the pelvic floor muscles can get stronger — just like an arm muscle that gets regular exercise. E-stim is usually started by a doctor, nurse practitioner, nurse or physical therapist. He or she will work with you one or more times per week for several weeks. Practitioners usually incorporate biofeedback at the same time as the e-stim, but not always.Continue reading→

Biofeedback Therapy for Incontinence

Biofeedback provides you with immediate information about how well you are performing pelvic floor exercises.

Biofeedback is used to treat many conditions such as headaches, high blood pressure, and incontinence. Biofeedback helps you learn how to control certain functions in the body. You can get information from a computer that translates your body functions into pictures or numbers to help you learn to how to improve your muscle control.Continue reading→