Overactive bladder syndrome (OBS) causes a frequent, uncontrolled urge to urinate, which can interfere with a person’s daily activities and affect their mental health. A new hydrogel-based device has been developed that can continuously monitor overactive bladders and has the potential to improve the treatment of the condition. Read more.
Source: New Atlas, March 13, 2023
Bowel leakage, the need for anal incontinence protection and a restricted social life may cause severe, decades-long suffering among women with obstetric injuries to the anal opening, according to a study from the University of Gothenburg. The study, published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, comprises a total of more than 11,000 women who had given birth vaginally in Sweden, twice, in the years 1987-2000. Read more.
Source: Science Daily, February 23, 2023
Unmet socioeconomic needs had a significant association with overactive bladder (OAB), adding to evidence of a complex interaction between social determinants of health and OAB, researchers said. Stressors such as housing and food insecurity and concerns about personal health as much as tripled the odds of reported OAB symptoms. The stressors remained significant predictors for OAB after adjustment for multiple demographic and medical factors. Unmet socioeconomic needs had a stronger association with OAB with urge urinary incontinence (UUI, “wet” OAB), reported Elisabeth M. Sebesta, MD, of Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, and co-authors in the Journal of Urology. Read more.
Source: MedPage Today, December 1, 2022
This observational study investigated the benefits of adopting a person-centred approach to the management of urinary incontinence and associated hygiene care. A trial was carried out in 12 residential care homes in the Emilia Romagna region of Italy. Toileting, containment product selection, frequency and timing of changes, and personal hygiene routines were tailored to the needs of individual residents. Skin redness improved, there was less leakage and residents’ wellbeing improved. Containment product changes were easier to carry out, fewer containment products were used, and product costs were reduced. The adoption of person-centred care initiatives was seen to benefit all stakeholders – namely, residents, caregivers and the administration of the residential care facility. Read more.
Source: Nursing Times, March 7, 2022
Post-acute care nurses are right on target with continence assessment and management, a new study finds. But their patients are largely unaware of these activities and think they’re going it alone, investigators say. The researchers conducted interviews with 10 nursing staff and 10 patients in two geriatric units of a rehabilitation hospital. Perhaps not surprisingly, nurses and patients had very different experiences of incontinence care. Read more.
Source: Urology Times, November 12, 2021
A University of Houston researcher is working to reverse pelvic floor dysfunction which can result in urinary incontinence, a condition affecting 30-60% of the female population and 5-15% of males. Stress urinary incontinence (SUI), the most common type of urinary incontinence in women, relates to the unintentional loss of urine which happens during movement or activities like sneezing, coughing or exercising. The condition is associated with pregnancy and aging and affects the pelvic floor, a group of muscles stretching from the pubic bone to the tail bone that contributes to continence. Read more.
Source: News-Medical.Net, October 15, 2020
Most people know that microorganisms live on our skin, and in other places in the body such as the digestive tract. However, traditional thinking and medical teaching was that there was no such microbiome in the urinary tract. Many people may still believe that urine is sterile. Advanced detection methods such as enhanced urine cultures and DNA sequencing have shown that this is not true. Read more.
Source: Harvard Health Blog, August 12, 2020
A team of neuroscientists and engineers has developed a tiny, implantable device that has potential to help people with bladder problems bypass the need for medication or electronic stimulators. The team—from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago—created a soft, implantable device that can detect overactivity in the bladder and then use light from tiny, biointegrated LEDs to tamp down the urge to urinate. The device works in laboratory rats and one day may help people who suffer incontinence or frequently feel the need to urinate. The new strategy is outlined in an article published Jan. 2 in the journal Nature. Read more.
Source: Medical Xpress, January 2, 2019
Specific locations of cerebral multiple sclerosis lesions appear to be associated with bowel incontinence, according to a study published online Dec. 11 in the Journal of Neuroimaging. Kilian Frohlich, M.D., from the University Hospital Erlangen in Germany, and colleagues used a voxel-wise lesion symptom mapping analysis to assess associations between bowel incontinence and cerebral multiple sclerosis lesions identified on magnetic resonance imaging of 51 patients. The researchers found associations between fecal incontinence in a total of 93 lesioned voxels, with 63 voxels located in the gray matter and 30 voxels in the white matter. Read more.
Source: Practice Update, December 17, 2018
As women age, their ability to get around affects their quality of life. A new study shows that older women’s physical functioning declines more rapidly if they develop urinary incontinence, according to public health researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Catherine Pirkle and Yan Yan Wu, both assistant professors in the Office of Public Health Studies in the Myron B. Thompson School of Social Work, collaborated with researchers in Brazil, Colombia and Canada to recruit approximately 900 women in their sixties and seventies from those three countries plus Albania. About 25 percent of women over age 60 experience urinary incontinence. Study participants completed a short test of physical functioning, which included measuring the speed of their usual walking pace, checking their balance and testing how fast they could stand up from a chair. The women also completed a questionnaire about their health, which included a query about whether they had experienced any leakage of urine in the past week. After two years, the women repeated the physical functioning test. Read more.
Source: University of Hawai’i News, October 11, 2018