Overflow Incontinence

You may find it difficult to start to pass water and that even when you have started the flow is weak and slow.

You might find that you dribble after you have finished passing water. Perhaps you dribble urine nearly all the time, even without noticing. You may need to go to the toilet very often during the day and night and may wet the bed.

You may have a feeling that your bladder is full, even after you have passed all the water you can.

This is called overflow incontinence . What is happening is that the muscles around the bladder are not able to squeeze the bladder empty. Because you are not able to empty it completely, your bladder and its muscles might gradually become slack and less able to be controlled. With larger amounts of urine being held all the time in the bladder, there is always a chance that some will leak out when you do not want it to - and it will cause a constant feeling of fullness.

Occasionally this is because the muscles around your bladder (or your control over them) have become weaker. This can happen in cases where there may have been nerve or muscle damage, perhaps caused by injury, surgery or disease.

Often it is because of some obstruction which is making it much more difficult than it used to be for your bladder to squeeze out all the urine which it contains. This obstruction can be caused by an enlarged prostate in men or by constipation or stricture of the urethra in either men or women, which makes it difficult for urine to flow out of the bladder outlet. If you are having problems with overflow incontinence there are two things your doctor will want to deal with. Of course he or she will want to find out what the the cause of the problem is. When the cause has been discovered, treatment can start.

While this is going on the bladder will still not be emptying properly - and when a bladder is never emptied properly, there is a high risk that the residual urine which stays in the bladder will become infected, which might cause further complications.

It is important in a situation like this that a way is found to empty the bladder and quite often this will mean using a catheter, which is a thin and flexible plastic tube that can be passed into the bladder through the bladder outlet, allowing the urine to drain.

Sometimes a catheter may be left in place, so that the urine can drain into a collection bag worn on the leg. This is called an indwelling catheter .

If possible it maybe better if you can be taught to perform intermittent catheterisation on yourself (perhaps with someone s help) at an interval specified by your doctor. Although this may sound awful, most people find that it is not as difficult or uncomfortable as they thought it would be and that it is less inconvenient than an indwelling catheter.

Normally either form of catheterisation will only be needed until the cause of the obstruction has been treated. overflow incontinence