[Coital urinary incontinence. Associated symptoms and severity of incontinence]

The objective of present study was to analyze the relationship between coital urinary incontinence (UI) and the symptoms of Stress UI (SUI), Urge UI (UUI) and the extent to which they impair the patient's life, measured through the ICIQ-UI SF questionnaire in a sample of sexually active women with UI symptoms.

Epidemiologic, observational, cross-sectional and multicentric study of 1,735 women with diagnostic of urinary incontinence (UI). Patients who were not sexually active were excluded, remaining 1,292 patients for the analysis. All women filled in the ICIQ-UI SF questionnaire and the King's Health Questionnaire (KHQ).

According to KHQ, the prevalence of coital incontinence was 29.4%. Women with coital incontinence compared to those who did not suffer from it, had similar mean age and body mass index, were more likely to have symptoms of SUI (37.6% vs. 27.7%) and less likely to have UUI (16.6% vs. 27.4%) (p < 0.001). 36.1% of women with SUI had coital UI; this percentage was lower for women with UUI (20.1%). ICIQ-UI global score was higher in women with coital incontinence, 14.1 vs. 12.1 (p < 0.001), difference that was mainly due to the dimension "affectation" rather than "frequency" and "amount" dimension scores.

Coital IU seem to be associated to SUI and to a higher severity of the urinary incontinence measured by the ICIQ-UI SF. Probably this association is due to the fact that ICIQ-UI-SF includes in its score the impact of patients' UI symptoms on their life and coital incontinence has an important effect on the quality of life of sexually active women.