Solutions for Female Stress Urinary Incontinence

Metropolitan Urological Specialists of Saint Louis, Missouri, with offices in Creve Coeur, Kirkwood, Florissant, and Washington, MO is all about offering advanced answers for widespread women's health conditions. Their objective is to offer useful, easy-to-understand facts so women, with their physicians, can examine their options and work out informed decisions.

What's Stress Urinary Incontinence?

Stress Urinary Incontinence, or SUI, is the abrupt, accidental release of urine during normal, daily activities. SUI is a different condition than Overactive Bladder (OAB), a condition characterized by urgency, frequency, waking up at night with or without bladder leaks. Many women have both of the varieties of incontinence. You may have SUI if you lose urine whenever you:

• Cough, sneeze, or laugh
• Walk, exercise, or lift something
• Rise from a sitting or lying position

It's also possible to visit bathroom frequently each day to avoid accidents. If you suffer from stress urinary incontinence, this means your urethra (the tubing from the bladder by which urine leaves your body) does not stay closed until it is time to urinate. This problem may occur as a result of:

• Pregnancy and childbearing
• Sustained heavy-lifting or straining
• Menopause
• Obesity
• Cigarette smoking

Most Common Symptoms Of Stress Urinary Incontinence

If you are experiencing urine leakage, take a moment to ask yourself:

• Do you suffer from urine leakage when laughing, sneezing, coughing, or working out?
• Do you wear panti-liners or pads to absorb urine leakage?
• Do you reduce or eliminate activities to avoid leakage?
• When arranging trip, outing, or event, does the availableness of restroom facilities impact your decision?

If you responded "yes" to even one of these straightforward questions, take the next step and talk with a physician or some other healthcare professional such as those at Metropolitan Urological Specialists in St. Louis, MO. Talking about the problem is the most important thing you could do to start taking charge of your bladder symptoms. Sadly, for many women, it's the toughest step. It should not be shameful-- urinary incontinence is a medical issue which is treatable. Consider asking your physician the subsequent questions to make that discussion a little bit easier:

• Which type of urinary incontinence do I have? 
• What medications are there to help me reclaim urinary control?
• What type is right for me?
• Can you manage this issue , or can you refer me to a doctor specializing in female urinary incontinence?

Treatments

Stress urinary incontinence is treatable at every age. Yet not all of the techniques work for everyone or even for all types of incontinence. For SUI, your physician may encourage one or more of the following:

1. Behavioral/Muscle Therapy: Therapy often starts off with Kegel exercises to help you build the pelvic floor muscles. Based on the extent of your condition, nevertheless, Kegels may not bring sufficient relief.
2. Biofeedback: With this method, the patient exercises the pelvic floor muscles while connected to an electrical sensing device. The device produces "feedback" to allow you to learn to better control these muscle groups. As time passes, biofeedback will allow you to use your pelvic muscles to diminish unpredicted urges to urinate and minimize some types of pelvic pain.
3. Electrical stimulation: This technique aids pelvic floor exercises by isolating the muscles involved. 
4. Medication: Some patients have both SUI and OAB. OAB symptoms are treatable with medications; but at this time there aren't any drugs approved to relieve SUI in the United States.
5. Surgery: An outpatient treatment, called Transvaginal Tape, can be performed to place small piece of mesh underneath the tube you urinate through (urethra) through the vagina.

This information is presented by Metropolitan Urological Specialists. If you have any further queries about stress urinary incontinence for women or any other urological issues, get an appointment at one of our practices' locations in Creve Coeur, Kirkwood, Florissant or Washington, Missouri.