Female Urinary Incontinence
Urinary incontinence is the involuntary leakage of urine. There are several
types of urinary incontinence.
-
Stress Incontinence: Women often experience stress incontinence after giving birth. This type
of incontinence is associated with coughing, sneezing, laughing, or exercising.
-
Urge Incontinence: Women who suffer from urge incontinence have a sudden strong urge to urinate,
but bladder contractions occur before they can make it to the bathroom.
-
Overflow Incontinence: Overflow incontinence occurs when the bladder fills up but doesn’t
empty, and the urine overflows beyond what the bladder can hold
-
Overactive Bladder (OAB): OAB is a sensation of urinary urgency that drives people to the bathroom
multiple times a day. This may or may not be accompanied by urge incontinence.
-
Mixed Incontinence: Mixed incontinence is a combination of more than one type of incontinence,
usually stress and urge.
Treatments
- Prescription medications: anticholinergics or beta-agonists can help with
overactive bladder (OAB) and may be helpful for urge incontinence.
- Periurethral bulking: involves injecting hydrogel into the area where the
bladder meets the urethra to narrow the urethra and reduce leakage.
- Botox® injections to the bladder
- The Burch procedure: a surgery to improve stress incontinence
-
Sacral neuromodulation: the surgical implantation of a pacemaker-like device to electrically
stimulate the bladder and restore normal communication between the brain
and the bladder and/or bowel.
- Percutaneous tibial nerve stimulation: an acupuncture type therapy performed
in the office to improve overactive bladder. A small needle is placed
in the ankle to stimulate a peripheral nerve that electrically restores
communication between the nervous system and the bladder.
- Sling procedures: surgery to support the neck of the bladder in women with
stress incontinence.
- Pelvic floor muscle rehabilitation: using a vaginal electronic probe to
enhance coordination and strengthening of the pelvic floor muscles to
treat vaginal pain, sexual pain, urinary dysfunction and bowel dysfunction.