What is urinary incontinence?
Urinary incontinence is a disturbing condition that not only causes many inconveniences in daily life, but may also have a psychological impact on the patient and may even affect the patient's social function. According to statistics, the rate of urinary incontinence in women is about 25%.
Urinary incontinence has become an invisible disease in today's society, which means that many people over 40 have urinary incontinence problems, but they are embarrassed to talk about it.
In fact, urinary incontinence is not as serious as most people think. On the contrary, mild urinary incontinence can be completely cured! What is urinary incontinence? It means "urine leaking out of the urethra without consciousness or involuntary", which can be roughly divided into four types:
1. Stress/abdominal pressure urinary incontinence: urine leaks out involuntarily when sneezing, coughing, lifting/lifting heavy objects.
2. Urgent urinary incontinence: when you feel the urge to urinate, you can't help but leak it before running to the toilet.
3. Overflow urinary incontinence: you always can't completely urinate, and there will always be residual urine leaking out.
4. Complete urinary incontinence: Urine will flow out involuntarily even when standing or sitting still.
Why does urinary incontinence occur? How can we avoid it in daily life? Now let me tell you two common causes of urinary incontinence and the usual prevention methods:
1. It is caused by urinary system disorders, such as urethral infection, aging of urethral muscle function, and increased bladder pressure leading to weakened sphincter resistance. So don't hold your urine in daily life and avoid lifting heavy objects to avoid abdominal pressure, bladder inflammation or reduced bladder contraction ability.
2. It is caused by postpartum compression of the birth canal and vagina, damage to bladder nerves and aging. Therefore, women should pay special attention during the delivery period, do more "Kegel exercises" after delivery to increase the contraction ability of the bladder sphincter, and supplement hormones after menopause to prevent aging. You should exercise more and maintain a healthy body in daily life to avoid leaving traces of urinary incontinence.
How to treat?
1. Drug treatment: Doctors will give different types of drugs according to the type of urinary incontinence.
2. Non-surgical treatment:
Including pelvic floor muscle exercise training (also known as Kegel exercise), biofeedback and electrical stimulation.
Pelvic floor muscle exercise: used to strengthen the pelvic floor muscles and enable you to control muscle contraction at will. The pelvic floor muscles not only surround the urethra (urethral opening), but also surround the vaginal opening and rectum.
Biofeedback: The above pelvic floor muscle exercise is difficult and hard to feel for some people, so the use of biofeedback devices can help these people achieve true contraction of the pelvic floor muscles. Through pressure or electromyographic physiological feedback, muscle contraction can be expressed visually or auditorily, so that you can see the changes in curves, numbers or sounds directly on the monitor screen to learn how to control pelvic floor muscle contraction.
Electrical stimulation: It is a kind of "passive pelvic floor muscle exercise" that stimulates the pelvic floor muscles through the vagina or anus to produce pelvic floor muscle contraction, increase urethral pressure and inhibit excessive and unstable bladder contraction. 2 to 3 times a week for 2 to 3 months or until you learn to actively contract.
3. Surgical treatment:
For patients with severe urinary incontinence who are ineffective with non-surgical treatment, surgical treatment can be considered. There are many surgical methods for urinary incontinence, and there are more than a hundred of them. The most common ones are as follows:
Traditional open bladder neck suspension (Burch procedure): The bladder neck tissue is suspended on the pubic symphysis, indirectly preventing the bladder neck from moving downward.
Laparoscopic assisted bladder neck suspension surgery: Due to the popularity of laparoscopy in recent years, the Burch procedure is performed with the assistance of laparoscopy, using sutures or mesh for suspension surgery, which has the advantages of small wounds and short hospital stays.
Tension-free interrupted urethral suspension (TVT): The bladder neck and urethra are suspended with a special belt but not fixed, with small wounds, short hospital stays, and a success rate of more than 90%.
In short, urinary incontinence is not an untreatable disease. Non-surgical rehabilitation and physiological feedback therapy have excellent treatment effects.
With surgical treatment, the cure rate can reach more than 90%. For mild urinary incontinence, the earlier the treatment is received, the better the effect.
I hope that patients can abandon conservative habits and no longer regard urinary incontinence as a hidden disease, so as to restore their self-esteem and improve their quality of life.
