Urinary incontinence in women – Related resources

Cochrane reviews

• Vaginal cones may be effective for stress urinary incontinence and might possibly be as effective as pelvic floor muscle training or electrostimulation .
• The autologous fascial sling may be more effective than the Burch colposuspension for treatment of stress incontinence, but at the cost of more complications .
• Laparoscopic colposuspension may be as good as open colposuspension for female urinary incontinence but the newer vaginal sling procedures appear to offer even greater benefits and better objective outcomes in the short term .
• There is insufficient evidence of mechanical devices for urinary continence in women .
• Preventive pelvic floor muscle training may result in less urinary incontinence in chilbearing women .
• Disposable insert pads may be the most effective and best accepted absorbent products for women with light urinary incontinence .
• Adrenergic agonist drugs appear to be more effective than placebo in reducing incontinence episodes and subjective symptoms .
• Abdominal retropubic suspension appears to be better than anterior vaginal repair for subjective cure .
• Bladder neck needle suspension surgery is probably not as good as open abdominal retropubic suspension for the treatment of primary genuine stress urinary incontinence in terms of lower cure rates and higher morbidity .
• Periurethral injection of established manufactured bulking agents may result in subjective and objective short term improvement of symptomatic female stress urinary incontinence in adults .
• Open retropubic colposuspension is an ef.
• There is insufficient evidence of the effectiveness of adding pelvic floor muscle training to other active treatment when compared with the same active treatment alone for stress, urgency or mixed urinary incontinence in women .

Other evidence summaries

• Hysterectomy may increase the odds of developing incontinence up to 60% .
• Single daily intravaginal estriol (0.5 mg) in postmenopausal women appears not to increase the risk of endometrial proliferation or hyperplasia .

Literature

Clinical practice reviews

• Idiopathic urgency urinary incontinence. N Engl J Med 2010 Dec 30;363(27):2672.
• Rogers RG. Clinical practice. Urinary stress incontinence in women. N Engl J Med 2008 Mar 6;358(10):1029-36.
• Holroyd-Leduc JM, Straus SE. Management of urinary incontinence in women: scientific review. JAMA 2004 Feb 25;291(8):986-95.
• Hanley J, Capewell A, Hagen S. Validity study of the severity index, a simple measure of urinary incontinence in women. BMJ 2001 May 5;322(7294):1096-7.