Types of urinary incontinence
There are mainly two types of urinary incontinence. Stress and urge urinary incontinence. Some women, especially older women, have both.
Stress urinary incontinence occurs when you sneeze, cough, laugh, jog, or do activities that put pressure on your bladder. It is the most common type of urinary incontinence of bladder control problems in women.
The female urinary incontinence emergency occurs when you have a great urge to urinate but cannot reach the bathroom in time. This can happen even when the bladder has only a small amount of urine. Some women may not have any warning before accidental leakage of urine occurs. Other women may leak urine when they drink water or when they hear or touch running water. An overactive bladder is a type of urinary incontinence, but not everyone with an overactive bladder loses urine.
What are the symptoms of different types of urinary incontinence?
Symptoms of stress urinary incontinence:
- Involuntary release of urine, especially when coughing, sneezing or laughing
- Leakage of small to moderate amount of urine
Symptoms of urge urinary incontinence:
- Frequent and sudden uncontrollable need to urinate
- You may have a moderate to a large amount of urine, although a small amount is possible
It is common for a person to have symptoms of both types of incontinence. This is called mixed incontinence.
What causes the different types of urinary incontinence?
Stress incontinence can be caused by childbirth, weight gain, or other conditions that stretch the muscles of the pelvic floor. When these muscles cannot hold the bladder properly, the bladder falls off and pushes against the vagina. You cannot tighten the muscles that close over the urethra. Therefore, urine can leak due to the extra pressure on the bladder when you cough, sneeze, laugh, exercise, or do other activities.
Urgent incontinence is caused by an overactive bladder muscle that pushes urine out of the bladder. It can be caused by bladder irritation, emotional stress, or brain conditions such as Parkinson’s disease or a stroke. Urologist in Noida often doesn’t know what causes it.
How are the types of urinary incontinence diagnosed?
To diagnose the cause of urinary incontinence, urologist in Ghaziabad asks people about their medical history and perform a physical exam. It may be easier for you to answer questions if you keep avoiding the dairy for 3-4 days before seeing your urologist in Greater Noida.
To check for stress incontinence, your urologist in Vaishali may ask you to cough while standing.
Sometimes urologist in Delhi request these tests:
- Bladder stress test and Bonney test.
- Pad test, which can help show how much urine is leaking. They give you an absorbent pad that has been heavy. You use the pad until urine leaks, and then return the pad to weigh yourself again. The increased weight of the pad provides an estimate of the amount of urine that leaked.
- Urinalysis and urine culture.
- Urodynamic tests. The urodynamic test is expensive. It is usually only done if you are considering surgery or if treatment has not worked for you and you need to know more about the cause. It provides a more advanced way to check the bladder function.
- Cystometry, a series of tests to measure bladder pressure at different levels of fullness.
- Post-emptying residual measures, which measure the amount of urine that remains in the bladder after urinating.
- X-ray or ultrasound. These are used to examine changes in the position of the bladder and urethra during urination, cough, or straining.
If the cause of the incontinence is not identified by the above tests, more thorough examinations may be required.