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Overactive Bladder in Clinical Practice provides a timely and comprehensive update on the overactive bladder (OAB) syndrome. The symptoms of urgency, with or without urge incontinence, usually with frequency or nocturia, now defined as the overactive bladder syndrome, have become a hot topic in urology, gynecology and urogynecology. Epidemiological data show very high disease prevalence (19%), particularly when compared with other chronic conditions such as diabetes (2%) and asthma (7%). OAB symptoms impact severely on patient's quality of life, causing significant impairment of patient vitality and limiting their physical role, similar to diabetes. The OAB syndrome involves all age groups, both sexes and is frequently found in neurogenic patients. This book will cover all aspects of OAB epidemiology, economics, pathophysiology, conservative, pharmaceutical and surgical and will be invaluable reading for residents and trainees in urology, gynecology and urogynecology.

Imagine the plight of a young woman, some time during the thousands of years before th the mid-18 century, who, soon after a dif? cult childbirth,? nds she can no longer keep from leaking urine. She is standing in the chill winter wind, her urine-soaked clothes clinging wet against her thighs as she comforts her crying baby knowing that she faces a life of misery, shame and social ostracism. Or imagine the middle-aged wife of a tenant farmer on the remote central Illinois plain, straining with her husband to lift a heavy log that has fallen on their only milk cow only to feel a deep tearing sensation and discover a large mass protruding between her legs. Gripped by fear, she cannot know what has happened to her or how she will care for her family if she can no longer help with the dif? cult tasks needed to live. We must be grateful to the generations of physicians before us who have pioneered treatments and developed preventions for the pelvic? oor disorders that have affected women throughout time. Each decade during the last 150 years has brought new insights, new operations, and new medicines to help women who suffer from these debilitating conditions. At? rst, surgical treatments were so dangerous that they could only be s- gested for the most severe of cases, but advances in anesthetic and surgical safety now make them available to the majority of women.