"Bladder Pacemaker" Helpful in Tough Incontinence Cases

Watch TV for a while and chances are you'll see plenty of ads for medications promising to help with urinary control. For the vast majority of persons who suffer from urinary incontinence, some combination of drugs, exercise and dietary changes will effectively manage the problem. Dr. Cindy Amundsen, assistant professor in the Division of Urology and the Division of Gynecologic Specialties at Duke University Medical Center, says these therapies don't help approximately 20 percent of those dealing with incontinence. But she says a new therapy, marketed under the name InterStim, can help many of those patients. "This therapy modulates the open nerve input to the bladder. You could essentially say it 're-paces' the bladder, just like a pacemaker of the heart re-paces the electro-chemical signals to the heart." Amundsen says physicians can check patients before implanting the pacemaker to test in advance how they'll respond. "About two-thirds of the patients I test-stimulate respond to where they are 50 percent or better than they were before or with any other therapy." I'm Cabell Smith for MedMinute.