What Is Overactive Bladder?


Overactive bladder—which your doctor may refer to as “OAB”—is an umbrella term that includes the frequent and urgent need to empty your bladder. One of the most common overactive bladder symptoms is a sudden urge to urinate, resulting in unintentional urine loss.

What are the Symptoms of Overactive Bladder?

You may be suffering from overactive bladder if:
Urgency Icon

Urgency

You experience a sudden or compelling need to urinate with inability to hold urine or control it

Urgency incontinence icon

Urgency Incontinence

You experience an urgent need to urinate and have urinary leakage accidents or trouble holding urine before making it to the restroom

Frequency icon

Frequency

You go to the restroom to urinate so often that it disrupts your life—typically 8 or more times a day

Nocturia icon

Nocturia

You wake up more than 1 time per night because you need to urinate

Did you know that patients can suffer from dual incontinence?
Dual incontinence is when a patient is experiencing both bladder and bowel control symptoms.

Your journey to find the OAB treatment solution that works for you

1CONSULT WITH YOUR DOCTOR

  • Discuss your overactive bladder symptoms
  • Start a baseline bladder diary
  • Undergo recommended diagnostic tests
  • Discuss treatment options

2INITIAL TREATMENT

  • Bladder training exercises
  • Lifestyle changes (fluid/diet modification)
  • Prescription medications
No symptom improvements?
Don’t give up!

Follow up with your doctor to discuss advanced therapy options

3ADVANCED THERAPIES

  • Sacral Neuromodulation
  • Chemodenervation

Overactive Bladder
Patient Care Pathway

Your doctor and his or her clinical team will follow a patient care pathway, which is a roadmap of the different treatment options available to you. The pathway starts with conservative treatments and then moves on to the advanced therapies.

Hear From the Experts

Rebecca McCrery, MD, FPMRS

Rebecca McCrery, MD, FPMRS
Urogynecologist

Overactive bladder is a term that refers to a condition where patients have a lot of urgency to use the bathroom. They’ll often present with urinary frequency and some patients will also leak urine associated with that urge. Oftentimes patients will say, if they just had a few more seconds to get to the bathroom, they’d be good.

In general, with OAB, we’ll start with conservative therapies: avoiding bladder irritants (such as caffeine and carbonated beverages) and making behavioral modifications (like going to the bathroom on a regular interval, even if somebody doesn’t have an urge to go). Doing some of these different strategies can be very helpful. Oftentimes, we’ll also incorporate a medication into the therapy to see if that gets the patient the results they are looking for. We do have several other options beyond medications that patients can opt to consider, such as Sacral Neuromodulation, tibial nerve stimulation, and Botox therapy.

Clinically proven. Patient approved.

94%

of patients
were satisfied
with their
therapy3

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IS RIGHT FOR YOU

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I’m glad I did it, because it was a simple procedure and it’s given me tremendous results.

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References:

1. Coyne KS, Sexton CC, Thompson CL, et al. The prevalence of lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) in the USA, the UK and Sweden: results from the Epidemiology of LUTS (EpiLUTS) study. BJU Int. 2009;104(3):352-360.

2. Census Reporter website. https://censusreporter.org/profiles/01000US-united-states/. Accessed July 19, 2019.

3. Pezzella A, McCrery R, Lane F, et al. Two-year outcomes of the ARTISAN-SNM study for the treatment of urinary urgency incontinence using the Axonics rechargeable sacral neuromodulation system. Neurourol Urodyn. 2021;40(2):714-721. doi:10.1002/nau.24615