Incontinence After Prostate Surgery is Normal and Treatable... Learn How!

Treatment for prostate conditions can lead to urinary incontinence. The 3 most common conditions of the prostate include Prostatitis, Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH), and prostate cancer. BPH and prostate cancer can often lead to surgical intervention and subsequent urinary incontinence.

​Urinary incontinence (UI) is defined as the involuntary leakage of urine. Both a radical prostatectomy and a prostate resection can lead to UI in patients that had none of these issues prior to surgery.

There are multiple reasons for this that can include damage to the nerve that controls urinary function, resection of one of the two sphincters that controls urine flow, and poor control of the pelvic floor. In 1996 Davidson et al. did a study in the UK to evaluate incontinence after radical prostatectomy. They found that at 3 months post-surgery, 21% of the participants were experiencing UI and 14% were still experiencing incontinence at 1 year. This percentage is significant when you consider that we do 90,000 radical prostatectomies per year in the US.

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