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New Relief for Stress Incontinence
Women who suffer from stress urinary incontinence (SUI) worry about coughing, sneezing, even laughing in public for fear of having an accident. For some the fear of embarrassment is so great that they become virtual recluses, staying at home and avoiding any social contact.
Even with this anxiety, however, 62% of women sufferers wait a year or longer before discussing the condition with their doctor, reports a new Multi-sponsor Surveys' Gallup Study of women with SUI.
If you find yourself dribbling urine during the day or even wetting the bed at night, you may be experiencing symptoms of overflow incontinence. Overflow incontinence is one of several different types of incontinence -- the inability to control urination. Overflow incontinence occurs when you are unable to completely empty your bladder; this leads to overflow, which leaks out unexpectedly. You may or may not sense that your bladder is full. The leakage, which can cause embarrassment and discomfort,...
Read the Overflow Incontinence article > >
"It's usually when something really embarrassing happens to them in public that they finally seek help," says Jill Peters-Gee, MD, director of the Continence Care Program for Women's Health Connecticut. Most women cope with SUI by wearing pads, says Peters-Gee, because they don't know that SUI can now be easily treated with a simple surgical procedure.
First though, a definition. SUI is the involuntary loss of urine due to any physical activity that puts strain on the bladder, says Peters-Gee. The most common type of incontinence, SUI affects nearly 8 million women in the U.S, and occurs when the pelvic muscles supporting the bladder and urethra have been damaged or weakened. Some of the physical changes that can lead to SUI include childbirth, pelvic or gynecologic surgery, menopause or estrogen deficiency, obesity, and chronic constipation
Up to 80% of cases of female incontinence are treatable, says Peters-Gee, with treatment options including:
- Kegel exercises to strengthen the pelvic muscles.
- Electrical stimulation to help return injured muscles to fitness, and biofeedback to record progress in strengthening treatments and exercises.
- Medical devices that block or capture urine.
- Hormone cream to restore the tissue of the vagina and urethra to their normal thickness (the thinner the tissue gets, as estrogen levels decline, the more chance there is for leakage).
- Surgery to repair or lift the urethra or bladder neck to provide support during straining or sudden movement.
At one time surgery to treat SUI was much more invasive, painful, and required a lengthy recuperation. That's one reason many women with SUI hesitate before seeking treatment, says Peters-Gee. A minimally invasive procedure that has been offered for the past seven years, however, is proving very successful.
Gynecare TVT Tension-free Support for Incontinence is used in a simple, outpatient procedure that usually can be completed within 30 minutes. The Gynecare TVT device uses a mesh sling to provide support to the middle of the urethra, the section that is strained during physical activities. The positioning of the device provides support only when needed and creates a "tension-free" treatment solution that reduces the risk of over-correcting.
Five-year data gathered in the United States, Europe, and Australia, and published last year in the International Uro-Gynecology Journal, has indicated that four to six years after treatment, 85%of the more than 200,000 women worldwide treated with this procedure no longer suffer from SUI, and an additional 11% remain significantly improved.
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