Source: Urology  |  Posted 9 years ago

Women with stress urinary incontinence void at a lower detrusor pressure. A chronically reduced outlet resistance during bladder filling, which probably contributes to stress urinary incontinence, also appears to affect the voiding phase in stress-incontinent women.

These observations are suggested by findings which confirm the normative pressure-flow data in women, say urologists at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, United States.

The urologists set out to define the normative values for pressure-flow studies in asymptomatic women and to compare them with the values in women with stress incontinence.

They recruited 20 asymptomatic women aged 30-70 (mean 41.7) years from the community to undergo urodynamic studies. Only women with no or minimal symptoms on the Urogenital Distress Inventory Questionnaire, minimal pelvic organ prolapse and no previous surgery for incontinence were included.

The results of the pressure-flow studies were compared with the values from women evaluated for stress urinary incontinence between December 1998 and August 2000.

The pressure-flow data of the 20 asymptomatic women were compared with 40 women with symptoms of pure stress urinary incontinence selected from the 415 who underwent urodynamic studies during this period. Of these, 16 were found to have stress urinary incontinence during the urodynamic study.

The average maximal flow was 17.2