women friends

Women Have Many Treatment Options for Urinary Incontinence

Roughly half of adult women may experience urinary incontinence, but few of them get diagnosed and treated despite a wide range of options to address the problem, doctors say.  Women are particularly prone to stress urinary incontinence, when the pelvic floor muscles are too weak to support the bladder. As a result, urine leaks during coughing, sneezing or exercise. Childbirth is a common reason for weak pelvic muscles, and obesity worsens the problem. Urge incontinence, in contrast, doesn’t have a clear cause, although it can sometimes happen due to neurological problems, the authors note. Some women may get both types of incontinence at once or develop bladder problems due to a urinary tract infection. Read more.

Source: Reuters, October 24, 2017

operating room surgery

Majority of Incontinence Treatments Deliver Poor Results

Surgery is the most reliable method of treatment for incontinence – curing the condition in just over eight in ten cases; other types of treatment, meanwhile, do not deliver the same kind of success. These are the findings of a comprehensive systematic overview of cure rates for the treatment of incontinence around the world during the last ten years. “Unfortunately we are not actually curing the condition in that many cases. Surgery aside, the results delivered are poor. And the problems are only going to get worse in the future because the population, as we know, is aging,” says Ian Milsom, Professor of Gynecology and Obstetrics at the Sahlgrenska Academy and Head of the Gothenburg Continence Research Center (GCRC). Read more.

Source: Science Daily, April 4, 2017