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Operation for Incontinence (Female)
What is
Operation for Incontinence (Female)?
Urinary incontinence is the involuntary loss of
urine or the inability to hold one's urine that
is enough to cause a social or hygiene concern.
Incontinence is four times more prevalent in
women than in men.
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Effects
of Operation for Incontinence (Female)
Generally, the less invasive or minor the
surgery is, the lower the chance of getting a
long-term success. Just like any other
procedures, one's chance of success that is long
term will depend also on one's general health,
age, weight, prior operations, and other
personal circumstances, for instance having a
hysterectomy simultaneously with the procedure.
A surgeon's option or choice of operation
recommended for you are dependent on these
factors.
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Candidates for Operation for Incontinence
(Female)
Occasionally, exercise and other conservative
techniques are not sufficient for some women. If
these methods are not producing any results
following a reasonable period, one might need to
discuss his or her choice of surgery with a
surgeon. This is not usually the first
alternative and even in the best situation,
there is no guarantee of getting good results.
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Your Consultation
The patient
will be admitted to the hospital a day prior to
the procedure and eating or drinking anything
for several hours before the operation is not
permitted. This is commonly practiced prior to
having a general anesthesia.
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The
Operation for Incontinence (Female) Procedure
The
Burch Colposuspension is the best known and most
commonly used technique for incontinence. This
procedure generates the highest rate of
long-term success with an 85 to 90% success rate
at five years postop.
Once the patient is under anesthesia, the
surgeon will create a small horizontal "bikini
line" cut just beneath the hairline. After this,
the surgeon will then make a cradle of threads
from the back to the front of the pelvic area
and stitched at each end to appropriate strong
fibrous tissues.
Once the patient comes around from the surgery,
a tube can be found from the wound which is
utilized to drain away any excess fluid. This
tube will be taken away after approximately 24
hours. A catheter which may be either coming out
through the wound or through the urethra or the
bladder outlet is seen. This will be needed
since the patient initially is not capable of
passing all urine and may leave some in the
bladder which eventually must be removed using
the catheter.
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Recovery
The
patient may stay in the hospital for
approximately one week but may also depend on
how fast he or she recovers. Once the patient
comes home from the hospital, full recovery may
take up to about six weeks. During this time,
the patient must be able to build up his or her
activities by stages. Driving may not be
recommended at about four weeks postop because
of the soreness that the patient may experience
which might inhibit the patient's reactions
during an emergency.
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Risks
Just
like any other operation, operations for stress
incontinence also have the usual inevitable
risks. Specifically, reports show that 1 out of
5 women have the ability to develop
complications such as the following:
-
Inability to fully empty the bladder which may
require treatment which involves intermittent
self-catheterization for a prolonged period of
time while function of the bladder returns to
normal.
-
Overactive bladder wherein the patient rushes
to the toilet and/or need to go repeatedly
even though the patient does not leak with
coughing, physical exertion, etc.
-
Some
patients may experience dyspareunia or
discomfort during sexual intercourse
Weakness of the pelvic floor such as the
possibility of prolapse of the womb.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Q:
What are the alternative procedures for
incontinence?
A:
There are a lot of recognized types of operation
for incontinence. These include anterior
repair of the vaginal wall, Stamey procedure
or needle bladder neck suspension, Marshall-Marchetti-Krantz
colposuspension, and a selection of sling
procedures. Your surgeon may recommend one
of these options that is most suitable for you.
For instance the Burch colposuspension may work
better for you because of your general health or
due to some particular features that are
pertinent to you. For example, the anterior
repair technique is suitable only if the
patient's main goal is to repair a prolapse and
the treatment of stress incontinence is less
significant.
Q:
What is the Tension-free Vaginal Tape surgery?
A:
The tension-free vaginal tape or TVT is
used in the creation of a sling and is a new
type of surgery that is being assessed at the
present time. The synthetic tape is placed
through small incisions on top of the pubic area
and stays permanently in place with body fibers
that will soon grow into it and offers support
for the bladder neck when laughing or coughing
puts stress to it. A local anesthesia is
usually performed in this procedure and hospital
stay and convalescence may be much shorter than
for the other operations mentioned above, that
is hospital stay of one or two days and
convalescence of about two weeks. The
tension-free vaginal tape procedure has been
utilized for only a few years. Although this
procedure remains experimental with no long-term
information on success rates or possible later
complications available as of the moment, it has
been demonstrating promising results with lesser
short-term complications than with the
conventional methods.
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The following list of Urology procedures are
performed at Beverly Hills Medical Group -
please click the links to find out more:
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