Overactive Bladder

What is overactive bladder?

Do you feel like you constantly need to be near the toilet, afraid that you won’t be able to get there on time? Do you feel like you have social problems with going to the restroom?  This means you may have an overactive bladder.

Overactive bladderis a dysfunction of the bladder, in which there is an urgent desire to urinate.  The urge may be difficult to suppress, and an overactive bladder can lead to unintentional loss of urine (incontinence).

If you have an overactive bladder, you may feel uncomfortable, withdrawn from society, and limit your work and social life.  The positive thing is that after a brief assessment and diagnostic procedures, you can receive appropriate treatment, which can significantly alleviate the symptoms of overactive bladder and improve your daily living conditions.

Symptoms of an overactive bladder

• sudden strong urge to urinate
• history of urinary incontinence, unintentional loss of urine immediately after an urgent urge to urinate.
• frequent urination (usually eight or more times in 24 hours)
• waking up 2 or more times at night to urinate (nocturia)

Overactive bladder (OAB) – urgency, with or without urge urinary incontinence, usually accompanied by urinary frequency and nocturia. “OAB-dry” is a term that refers to patients with symptoms of OAB without urge urinary incontinence. The key symptom of Overactive Bladder is urgency – a sudden, “forced” desire to empty the bladder that is difficult or impossible to put off. Frequency is patients’ complaints about urinating too often during the day, and nocturia is patients’ complaints about the need to wake up more than once at night in order to empty the bladder.

Until now, overactive bladder is somewhat of a mysterious disease.

For example, the diagnosis of OAB is not included in the international classification of diseases, and some doctors use the synonym “urinary urgency and frequency syndrome.”

OAB is often a serious disease. It requires timely and adequate treatment. Patients with OAB should be warned that this is a chronic disease that requires constant monitoring, treatment and contact with a doctor. Even in the early stages of the disease, existing treatment methods, including drug therapy, pelvic floor muscle exercises, behavioral therapy, electrical stimulation and neuromodulation, do not allow the patient to feel completely healthy. This is due to the fact that after cessation of treatment, the vast majority of patients experience a relapse of symptoms of the disease.