[Involuntary leakage of urine in women]

Involuntary leakage of urine in women is often the result of ill-understood pathological conditions which, it seems to us, can most often be related to neurological troubles or to post-operative urethral scarring with or without weak sphincter action associated with urethral instability. They are responsible for a large fraction of the poor results that have been obtained after treatment of bladder instability or of urinary incontinence due to the transmission defect. They should be looked for carefully in every pre-treatment work-out of a patient. The treatment consists mainly in using oestrogen and in re-educating the sphincter muscles with the help of a biofeed-back technique, as well as finally giving-anticholinergic drugs. When they are associated with stress incontinence of urine due to faulty transmission they do not represent an absolute contra-indication to surgery, so long as it is understood that the outcome of the surgery will always, in these cases, be less favourable.