Disability and inappropriate use of medications increase urinary incontinence in older people

The risk of suffering from or a decline in urinary incontinence is greater among older people with a disability or those who take inappropriate medication than their peers. That is one of the main conclusions of the study "Predicting continence decline in institutionalized older people: a longitudinal analysis", which has just been published by Javier Jerez Roig, a physiotherapist and the coordinator of the Methodology, Methods, Models and Outcomes of Health and Social Sciences (M₃O) research group at the UVic-UCC, in the journal Neurology & Urodynamics, a benchmark in the field of urology. The study is also authored by four researchers at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN) in Natal (Brazil), who Jerez Roig collaborates with on a regular basis.

The objective of the study was to identify the incidence and risk factors for incontinence in institutionalised older people. To that end, the researchers tracked more than 300 people living in 10 residential homes for senior citizens in Brazil for two years. The participants in the study underwent an evaluation to assess their level of continence every 6 months. 41% of all the individuals studied suffered from total incontinence at the beginning of the research.

The results obtained show that incontinence deteriorated in 39% of the people studied during the observation period, while it remained stable in almost half (49%) and 10% improved their condition at some point. The study also shows that people suffering from an initial disability and those who took an incorrect medication were those who presented the greatest risk of worsening incontinence, with levels of 4 and 2 times higher than the others respectively. Furthermore, the individuals who experienced a deterioration in their daily life activities during the study period presented a risk of deterioration that was 3 times higher than the others.

In the light of these results, Javier Jerez Roig concludes that "strategies based on a review of medication and fostering physical activity and functional capacity are needed" to prevent and treat urinary incontinence, a common geriatric syndrome which affects more than half of the senior citizens living in residential homes. "It often goes unnoticed due to the feelings of shame that it creates in the people who suffer from it," adds Jerez Roig, who says that "incontinence not only has major consequences for the health of the people who suffer from it, but also has a significant socio-economic impact" for the environment.