Anyone who has struggled with symptoms of incontinence knows the frustration and embarrassment it brings. But more than that, it truly curtails your life. By the time they come to see us, many of our patients have tried all of the standard recommendations, often for years, and without success. Fortunately, there is a better way to not just manage but resolve bladder and bowel leakage. Here are two signs you’re a candidate for a truly effective incontinence treatment.
Level of Severity
The first sign relates to the severity of your incontinence. You may be a candidate for the most effective, modern therapy to restore bladder and bowel control if you are experiencing bladder or bowel leakage that is beyond the level of a minor nuisance. Once the problem involves using liners and pads and altering things you do in your daily life, then chances are very high you’ll benefit from this minimally invasive, highly effective treatment.
Limited Success with Other Treatments
Another sign that you are a candidate for this modern therapy involves what you’ve already done to try to remedy the condition. Have you tried changing your diet or fluid intake, added fiber, taking Imodium or using bladder medications, or committed to regular Kugels or pelvic floor exercises? Perhaps you’ve even had a bladder sling or other attempted corrective surgery that did not last or did not work at all.
In some cases, people have experienced loss of bladder control or bowel control with age, or it’s the result of pregnancy and torn tissues during delivery, radiation to the prostate, rectum, or cervix, pelvic, bladder, or rectal surgery, or even no identifiable reason. The common thread is that in nearly all cases, the body responds extremely well to a modern technology that sends a gentle current to the pelvic floor, including the bladder and bowel sphincters, thus restoring the natural function of those muscles and tissues.
Virtually every insurance plan covers the treatment, which consists of a 25-minute minor procedure performed with local anesthetic to numb the tailbone region for the placement of a tiny device under the skin around a person’s back pocket area. It’s called sacral nerve modulation, and it has surpassed all other therapies for the problem. This therapy delivers over 90% success rates with a minimalist procedure requiring no general anesthesia, from which a person simply walks out of the facility with two Band-Aids and no recovery time required.
Sacral nerve modulation has been around for nearly 20 years and FDA approved for nearly as long. It continues to get better with the innovations of the two companies that perform research and create the amazing devices, Axonics Corp. and Medtronic Corp. Specialists in the niche field of sacral neuromodulation often joke that the therapy is the best-kept secret in medicine because it is so highly effective and so little known.
Here at The Continence Center and Nevada Surgical, we’re working to change that. If incontinence is a fact of your life, contact us today to learn more about how you can resolve it for good.
