The prevalence of urinary incontinence and its influence on the quality oflife in women from an urban Swedish population

Objectives. To assess the prevalence of urinary incontinence and its influe nce on the quality of life. Material and methods. A random sample of every fourth woman aged greater th an or equal to 20 years resident in a primary health care district of the c ity of Goteborg was obtained from the population register (n=2911). The wom en were invited by letter to complete a questionnaire concerning urinary in continence. The women were also requested to assess their quality of life u sing a visual analogue scale. Results. The overall response rate was 77%. The prevalence of urinary incon tinence increased (p<0.001) in a linear fashion from 3% in the cohort 20-29 years to 32% in the cohort of women aged greater than or equal to 80 years . The proportion of women suffering from stress incontinence decreased (p<0 .001) with increasing age, while the proportion of women suffering from urg e and mixed incontinence increased (p<0.01) with increasing age. Women with stress incontinence had a greater body weight and had given birth to a gre ater number of children compared to continent women. There was, however, in this respect no difference between women with urge incontinence and contin ent women. Women with urinary incontinence reported a poorer quality of lif e compared to continent women (p<0.01). Women with urge incontinence and wo men with mixed incontinence reported a poorer quality of life compared to w omen with stress incontinence (p<0.05). Only 6% of the women from this popu lation had sought medical attention for urinary incontinence. Conclusions. Although urinary incontinence was a prevalent condition, parti cularly among the elderly and had a negative influence on the quality of li fe, only a small number of women had sought medical care.