De novo urinary incontinence after pelvic organ prolapse surgery—a national database study

To investigate the prevalence and risk factors of de novo urinary incontinence (UI) after pelvic organ prolapse (POP) surgery.

Data from 2013 to 2016 were collected from the Danish Urogynecological Database, where registration for any urogynecological procedure performed in Denmark is mandatory. Inclusion criteria were urinary continent women who underwent POP surgery. A woman was urinary continent if her total score on the International Consultation on Incontinence Questionnaire-Urinary Incontinence-short form (ICIQ-UI-sf) was 0 and she answered ‘never’ to ‘When does urine leak?’ Postoperatively, the women were categorized as continent or women with stress urinary incontinence (SUI), urgency urinary incontinence (UUI), mixed urinary incontinence (MUI) or undefined UI. We performed multivariate logistic regression analyses. The included parameters were preoperative POP stage (POP-Q), compartment, BMI and age. P values < 0.05 were considered statistically significant.

We included 1198 women. The risk of de novo UI was 15%; 45% had SUI, 30% had UUI, 16% had MUI, and 10% had undefined UI. BMI was highly associated with de novo UI; the risk was 12% for women with BMI < 25, 16% for women with BMI 25 – < 30 and 23% for women with BMI ≥ 30. Age, compartment and POP stage were not associated with de novo UI.

The prevalence of de novo UI is the same regardless of the involved compartment/s and POP stage. BMI is significantly associated with de novo UI; twice as many women with BMI ≥ 30 had de novo UI compared with women with BMI < 25.