Urinary incontinence: newer pharmacotherapeutic trends

[Our experience with trans-obturator tape surgery in 150 cases]

BACKGROUND

Nearly 30% of adult European women suffers from urinary incontinence. The recently introduced Trans-Obturator Tape (TOT) implant provides a new surgical technique for the treatment of stress incontinence.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

Preoperative work-up included detailed history taking, stress-test and Q-tip test, general and gynaecological physical examination and completion of the QUID questionnaire. Equivocal cases were further investigated with urodynamic assessment. TOT implantation was performed on 150 patients. Clinical efficacy of the treatment was evaluated with the QUID questionnaire.

RESULTS

Mean age of the patients was 50.8 years (SD = 8.64). 69 patients (46%) had genuine stress incontinence, 33 patients (22%) had urge incontinence, 48 patients (32%) had mixed type incontinence with dominant stress component. Mean length of follow-up was 16 months (4-26 months). Preoperative severity score of stress incontinence was 11.78 on average, while that of urge component was 6.63. On average, it took 25 minutes to complete the operation. Four out of the 150 operations were complicated by adverse event. Twelve patients required prolonged catheterisation exceeding 24 hours with a maximum of 5 days. The mean length of hospital stay was 4.76 days (SD = 0.8). Evaluation of postoperative questionnaires resulted in a mean severity score of 2.22 for the stress component and 2.59 for the urge component. In a patient satisfaction survey 46 patients reported the treatment as excellent (47.4%), 39 as good (40.2%), 7 as satisfactory (7.2%), 3 as suboptimal (3.1%) and 2 patients reported the procedure as ineffective (2.1%).

CONCLUSIONS

The procedure is an effective, quick, minimally invasive method of treating urinary incontinence. The operation requires short hospital stay and carries a low morbidity.

The overactive bladder: review of current pharmacotherapy in adults. Part 1: pathophysiology and anticholinergic therapy

Overactive bladder is a syndrome characterised by urinary urgency, with or without urge incontinence, and usually with frequency and nocturia. It affects millions of people of all ages worldwide and causes significant morbidity, especially in terms of health-related quality of life. It poses a huge economic burden on health resources. Managing such patients involves a thorough history, physical examination and the use of pertinent investigations before the initiation of treatment. Therapy consists of lifestyle changes, bladder training, anticholinergics, second-line agents such as resiniferatoxin instillation or botulinum toxin injections into the bladder in refractory cases and, finally, in intractable cases, surgery. In the first part of this review of pharmacotherapy for the treatment of this condition, the focus is on the pathophysiological factors potentially involved in overactive bladder and covers the wide range of currently available first-line anticholinergic agents. Treatment algorithms are suggested on the basis of current literature.