Other Treatment

Other types of treatment for urinary incontinence include:

• Behavioral methods. These are often the first thing to try. They often work well. They include:
  • Bladder training (also called bladder retraining). This is used to treat urge incontinence. With bladder training, you slowly increase how long you can wait before having to urinate by trying to delay urination after you get the urge to go.
  • Timed urination. It can be used to treat both urge and stress incontinence. With timed urination, your doctor has you urinate on a schedule, even if you don't have to go.
  • Prompted urination. It requires a caregiver to prompt the person to urinate. This technique is used mostly for people with a disability that gets in the way of using the bathroom on their own (functional incontinence).
• Acupuncture. It has been studied for improving urge incontinence, with promising results. In one study, four weekly acupuncture treatments greatly improved women's urge incontinence, along with how much and how often they urinated.²
• Mechanical devices, such as a pessary.
• Absorbent products, such as diapers.

Before trying behavioral methods or exercise for urinary incontinence, ask your doctor the following questions:

• Is behavioral or exercise therapy alone likely to restore bladder control? Mild to moderate cases of common types of incontinence can be cured or greatly improved by these methods.
• How long should I try behavioral or exercise techniques before I consider surgery or other treatment methods? Techniques like Kegel exercises don't limit future treatment options (and they may even improve the odds of success for other treatments). So it is best to set a length of time after which the improvement can be evaluated.
• Can I use exercises or behavioral methods along with medicine if medicine treatment is recommended? It may be possible to take medicine for a shorter time or to reduce the amount of medicines used if other methods of treatment are combined with medicine.