Urinary Incontinence
What is Urinary Incontinence?
Male urinary incontinence is when a man experiences accidental urine leakage. There are many possible underlying causes for male incontinence. Determining the cause can help your doctor decide on the best course of treatment.
Types of Urinary Incontinence
Stress Urinary Incontinence (SUI)
- Bladder leakage that occurs when you put pressure on the muscles around your bladder, like when you cough, laugh, sneeze, lift something or exercise
Urge Urinary Incontinence (UUI)
- Bladder leakage that happens in conjunction with a sudden, strong or frequent urge to urinate
Mixed Incontinence (both SUI and UUI)
- Some people leak urine with activity (SUI) and often feel the urge to urinate (UUI). This is mixed incontinence.
Overflow Incontinence
- With overflow incontinence, the body makes more urine than the bladder can hold or the bladder is full and cannot empty thereby causing it to leak urine.
Management
Following prostate surgery, bladder surgery or radiation therapy, men are encouraged to attempt active conservative management
- Avoid food and drinks that seem to increase your symptoms such as caffeine and acidic foods (alcohol, tomatoes, citrus)
- Keep hydrated to avoid your urine getting too concentrated, which can irritate your bladder
- Schedule regular bathroom visits with the goal of gradually increasing the length of time between trips
- Eat more fiber and avoid straining during bowel movements.
- Quit smoking. Persistent coughing from smoking can stress pelvic floor muscles.
- Maintain a healthy weight. Obesity puts extra pressure on your bladder and can make incontinence worse.
Treatments
Treatment for bladder leakage depends on the type of incontinence (urge or stress) and its cause. Treatments may include:
- Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy: These help strengthen and control the muscles involved in urination. Kegels are one example of pelvic floor muscle exercises.
- Medicines: If you have urge incontinence, depending on what’s causing it, medicines may be able to help.
- Electrical Stimulation and Neuromodulation sends small pulses of electricity to your pelvic muscles to make them tighter and stronger
- Injections of botulinum toxin (BOTOX®) into the bladder muscle to keep it from contracting too often.
- Surgery and Outpatient Procedures: Depending on the type of incontinence and its cause, surgery and outpatient procedures can treat urinary incontinence.
- We specialize in real solutions for male incontinence, from minimally invasive surgical procedures like the male sling for mild to moderate incontinence to the gold standard artificial urinary sphincter implant that can resolve even severe incontinence. Your doctor will help you choose which approach is best.
