Knowledge and Severity of Female Urinary Incontinence and Reasons for Not Seeking Treatment
Abstract
Urinary incontinence (UI) is a commonly overlooked problem in women, particularly women of post-menopausal age. Despite the medical, social, and hygiene burdens conferred by UI to its sufferers, past studies have shown that only a few among women afflicted with UI sought treatment. This may be due to various reasons: lack of knowledge and awareness of UI or a wrong belief of UI as a natural part of aging. This study aimed to investigate the association between knowledge and severity of UI and reasons for not seeking treatment among post-menopausal women in Bandung, Indonesia. This was an analytic cross-sectional study conducted at the Geriatric and Gynecology Clinic, Dr. Hasan Sadikin General Hospital, in September 2013. Ninety-one women who met the inclusion criteria were interviewed to assess their knowledge of UI. The severity of UI was assessed using Urinary Distress Inventory 6 (UDI-6). Data were analyzed using the chi-square test. Sixty-five respondents (70.7%) had poor knowledge of UI. Knowledge of UI was not associated with awareness of UI as a medical condition (p=0.633). The difference in UI severity was associated with the perception of UI as a normal part of aging (p=0.008). Post-menopausal women are poorly informed regarding urinary incontinence. However, knowledge alone might not be adequate to encourage women to seek treatment. Further studies are needed to investigate women’s reasons for not seeking treatment for UI.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Milsom I, Gyhagen M. The prevalence of urinary incontinence. Climacteric. 2019;22(3):217–22.
Surjadi LM, Purwara BH. Tinjauan dugaan inkontinensia urin pada penderita yang datang ke poliklinik ginekologi RS. Hasan Sadikin Bandung. JIMK. 2017;5(1):75–81.
Cardozo L, Staskin D. Textbook of Female Urology and Urogynaecology. 1st ed. United States: CRC Press; 2016.
Perera J, Kirthinanda DS, Wijeratne S, Wickramarachchi TK. Descriptive cross sectional study on prevalence, perceptions, predisposing factors and health seeking behaviour of women with stress urinary incontinence. BMC Womens Health. 2014;14:78.
Waetjen LE, Xing G, Johnson WO, Melnikow J, Gold EB. Factors associated with seeking treatment for urinary incontinence during the menopausal transition. Obstet Gynecol. 2015;125(5):1071–9.
Schreiber Pedersen L, Lose G, Høybye MT, Jürgensen M, Waldmann A, Rudnicki M. Predictors and reasons for help-seeking behavior among women with urinary incontinence. Int Urogynecol J. 2018;29(4):521–30.
Chen CCG, Cox JT, Yuan C, Thomaier L, Dutta S. Knowledge of pelvic floor disorders in women seeking primary care: A cross-sectional study. BMC Fam Pract. 2019;20(1):70.
Basu M, Duckett J. Barriers to seeking treatment for women with persistent or recurrent symptoms in urogynaecology. BJOG. 2009;116(5):726–30.
Fritel X, Panjo H, Varnoux N, Ringa V. The individual determinants of care-seeking among middle-aged women reporting urinary incontinence: Analysis of a 2273-woman cohort. Neurourol Urodyn. 2014;33(7):1116–22.
Choi H, Park JY, Yeo JK, Oh MM, Moon DG, Lee JG, et al. Population-based survey on disease insight, quality of life, and health-seeking behavior associated with female urinary incontinence. Int Neurourol J. 2015;19(1):39–46.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15395/mkb.v53n3.2310
Article Metrics
Abstract view : 516 timesPDF - 363 times
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
MKB is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
View My Stats