What Is Urinary Incontinence? - Dr. Alinsod (VIDEO)

Dr. Alinsod:
Urinary incontinence is a big problem in the United States because of the aging population. Basically incontinence is the leakage of urine when you don’t want it to. Incontinence is broken up into let’s say four major headings: There’s stress incontinence. That means you leak urine with stress such as a cough, a sneeze, a jump. That’s probably the most common kind of incontinence that my patients complain about.

The second type of incontinence is incontinence from spasms of the bladder. The term used is detrusor overactivity or even overactive bladder where the bladder, just on its own, has a spasm, squeezes the bladder, and urine comes out. The other type of incontinence, the third type, would be incontinence from the nerves not working well. So the bladder gets full, so full that urine leaks out and the patient doesn’t sense it.

So that’s one other type of incontinence, and then there’s another type of incontinence that we don’t see in the United States too much, and that’s when there is a physical hole between the bladder and the vagina. And that happens a lot in, let’s say, African countries where childbirth trauma is so huge that holes occur between the bladder and the vagina. In the United States it’s very rare, but these fistulas that form between the bladder and the vagina are one source of incontinence that I don’t see very often.

And then you can also have incontinence that’s called mixed where you can have stress incontinence where you leak when you cough, sneeze and jump, mixed in with spasms of the bladder, sudden urges to go, so it can all be mixed up. It doesn’t always have to be a pure one type of incontinence; they can all be mixed up.

About Dr. Alinsod, M.D., F.A.C.O.G., A.C.G.E.:
Dr. Red Alinsod, M.D., F.A.C.O.G., A.C.G.E., graduated from Loma Linda University School of Medicine, Loma Linda, California, in 1986 and completed his OB/GYN residency at Loma Linda University Medical Center in 1990. His focus in those early years was pelvic surgery. He was the first Rutledge Fellow at MD Anderson Cancer and Tumor Institute and was also selected as a Galloway Fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Medical Center.

Visit Dr. Alinsod at South Coast Urogynecology

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Tags:

• Bedwetting
• Overactive Bladder
• Urinary Incontinence