Therapy | Urge Incontinence

Therapy

The treatment of urge incontinence depends largely on the underlying disease. The treatment of the disease leading to urge incontinence is therefore obligatory. If no direct cause for the development of urge incontinence can be found, a drug therapy should be initiated.

Urge incontinence is usually treated with drugs that inhibit the parasympathetic innervation of the detrusor vesicae muscle or that act directly on the bladder muscle. For this reason, the use of so-called parasympatholytics, beta-sympathomimetics or tricyclic antidepressants is recommended. However, in cases of purely sensory urge incontinence, without involuntary contractions of the bladder voiding muscle, the treatment can be more complicated. If urge incontinence in women occurs in combination with diseases of the internal female reproductive organs, without evidence of overactivity of the detrusor vesicae muscle, the local application of estrogens may be able to alleviate the symptoms. Furthermore, the drug therapy of urge incontinence should always be supplemented by bladder retraining or psychotherapy.

Prevention

Whether the development of urge incontinence can actually be prevented has so far been rather controversial. Nevertheless, certain measures should be taken at an early stage for persons at risk.Since every form of urinary incontinence is often provoked by a weak pelvic floor, young women should already start strengthening the muscles. The earlier the pelvic floor muscles are trained, the less damage is caused.

In this context, both targeted gymnastics and regular riding can effectively train the pelvic floor muscles. Furthermore, chronic coughing constantly increases the pressure on the pelvic floor and the muscles of the bladder wall. Since smokers suffer particularly frequently from chronic coughing, persons at risk should definitely stop smoking early.

Furthermore, excessive body weight can put a strain on the pelvic floor. For this reason, obese people are demonstrably much more at risk of developing urge incontinence. In addition, it can often be observed that many people with urinary incontinence deliberately drink far too little.

In this way they try to reduce the urge incontinence. In fact, permanent under-drinking can make urinary incontinence even worse. Only regular filling of the bladder can train the bladder muscles.

However, if the bladder is filled only slightly, its capacity can decrease significantly over time. In addition, reducing the amount of water you drink every day has been shown to increase the risk of developing infections. The reason for this is the fact that bacterial pathogens are no longer flushed out and can settle in the bladder and urethra.