[Assessment of urination before and following operations for stress incontinence]

Micturition studies, using uroflowmetry (electronic weighting), and calendar evaluation were repetitively applied in a prospective scheme to 55 women with stress incontinence under standardised conditions preoperatively as well as two to four weeks and again two to six months after surgery. Investigations of the same kind were made for comparison on 22 women with clinically intact urinary tract. The mean values of micturition volumes, maximum and average urine flow rates and rates of increase in flow (angle alpha) of the 55-group differed with significance from the controls, even before surgery. Those differences were even larger in the early postoperative phase, when significant rises were recordable also from voiding time and flow time. In later follow-up checks, however, mean values returned to points closer to preoperative original figures (but not to normal comparative values). When different surgical techniques were separately evaluated (18 cases of simple vaginal repair, 14 cases of pubococcygeal repair, 14 sling operations, and nine colposuspensions), the significance of early postoperative differences between mean values continued to apply only to maximum and average urine flow after sling operations and to average flow rate after simple vaginal repair. Mean voiding, flow, and waiting time were preoperatively increased only in cases of severe descensus. The dependence of maximum and average flow rate on voided volume was duly considered in the uroflow index. There were again significant preoperative and postoperative differences from the control group, but on balance the index stayed within normal or boundary limits.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)