NEAUA - 2005 Abstracts - Frequency of Stress Urinary Incontinence (SUI) Episodes in Women with either Pure SUI or Mixed Urinary Incontinence

Frequency of Stress Urinary Incontinence (SUI) Episodes in Women with either Pure SUI or Mixed Urinary Incontinence

Anurag K. Das, MD¹, Chaofeng Liu², Eric S. Meadows, Ph. D.², John Mershon², David Muram, MD², David Weinstein, MD³.
¹Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA, ²Eli Lilly, Indianapolis, IN, USA, ³Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA.

Background:
Both stress incontinence and mixed incontinence are common. We used a large database to determine the relationship between the type of incontinence and the frequency of reported incontinence episodes.
Methods:
The analysis was based on 1692 women with SUI or stress-predominant mixed urinary incontinence, which only included subjects with twice the number of weekly SUI episodes as urge urinary incontinence (UUI) episodes. Incontinence symptoms were assessed and quantified with the Stress/Urge Incontinence Questionnaire (S/UIQ), a validated 2-question instrument that asks patients to recall the number of SUI and UUI episodes that they experienced in the past week. Subjects were stratified according to type of incontinence reported on the S/UIQ: pure SUI (no UUI episodes in the past week) or stress-predominant mixed urinary incontinence (MUI, at least 1 UUI episode in the past week).
Results:
Symptoms N Number of Weekly Incontinence Episodes (median)
Total Stress Urge P
MUI 1011 16 13 3 <.001
SUI 681 7 7 N/A

Pure SUI was reported by 681 (40.2%) women while 1011 (59.8%) women had stress-predominant MUI symptoms. Women with stress-predominant mixed incontinence reported more total (stress + urge) incontinence episodes than women with pure SUI: 16 vs. 7 weekly incontinence episodes (median), p < .001. The women with MUI symptoms also had more frequent stress incontinence symptoms (13 stress incontinence episodes/week) compared to women with pure SUI (7 stress incontinence episodes/week, p < .001 for comparison).
Conclusions:
Women with stress-predominant mixed incontinence symptoms reported more frequent incontinence episodes than women with pure SUI. Of interest, women with both urge and stress symptoms also reported more frequent incontinence episodes when only the stress component was considered. Previous studies have suggested that severe stress incontinence may lead to mixed symptoms. Data from the current study support this hypothesis. An alternative explanation is that one of the inclusion criterion (twice as many stress vs. urge weekly episodes) for the current study resulted in the enrollment of a disproportionately large number of women with mixed incontinence symptoms who also had a high frequency of stress incontinence episodes. In fact, both potential explanations might be important when considering the current results.

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