What treatments are available for urge incontinence?
For urge incontinence, we start with food restriction and Kegel exercises. If that doesn’t work, we go to the gold standard first line therapy, which is anti-cholinergic medication. There are multiple, different medications available, and they vary to some degree in efficacy, but some patients respond better to certain medications than other. The biggest drawback to this medication is that they have to take it everyday and if they stop medications, the symptoms come back. And the side effects can be bothersome. Although the medicine calms the bladder down and allows the patients to be drier, it also has side effects in the GI tract as well as the eyes and salivary gland. Specifically, the patient can develop constipation, dry eyes and dry mouth. And those can be bothersome. Some patients, I put on a stool softener at the same time as the anti-cholinergic medication to prevent the constipation. These medications do help about 50%, which in some patients they help more than others. For p
