Drug treatment of urinary incontinence

Urinary incontinence is usually classified into four types: stress, urge, reflex and overflow incontinence. The first three types of incontinence are due to urine storage dysfunction and the latter is due to urine emptying dysfunction. To improve urine storage dysfunction treatment should be aimed at decreasing detrusor overactivity, increasing bladder capacity and/or increasing outlet resistance, whereas to improve emptying dysfunction, increasing detrusor contractility and/or decreasing outlet resistance are required. This review summarizes the various drugs currently in clinical use and new drugs under investigation.