Prevalence of Urinary Incontinence among Young Healthy Females in Gujarat - A Cross Sectional Study

Background: Urinary incontinence is a problem that creates both physical and psychological nuisance to all women. It has significant impact on socioeconomically aspect of life too. This problem needs to be studied in detail in young Gujarati population because of lack of precise data at early age. It is also essential to estimate the disease burden that will help in to find out preventive strategies and early intervention. Hence, the present study has been carried out to determine the prevalence of urinary incontinence among young healthy Gujarati females.Methods: This was a cross sectional study conducted among 323 young female aged between 18 to 45 years from month of December 2017 to October 2018. All the data was collected by Proforma consisting of socio demographic details, QUID questionnaire for female urinary incontinence diagnosis and also questions to assess the severity of urinary incontinence. Incontinence was classified as urge, stress and mixed based on symptoms according to QUID questionnaire.Results: The prevalence of UI was 29.36% (323 out of 1100). Of the total female having incontinence, highest numbers were found to have stress incontinence (51.70%, 167/323) followed by mixed (37.15%, 120/323) and urge incontinence (11.15%, 36/323). Out of 323 subjects 214 (66.25 %) were young healthy females aged between 18 to 35 years having complained of urine leakage. Majority (55.60 %) were suffering from stress urinary incontinence in young age.Conclusion: Urinary incontinence is bothersome condition among all young females too. Awareness has to be created about the any kind of urine leakage at any age.So that necessary steps can be taken to prevent and to treat this silent disease at early age.Key words: Prevention, urinary incontinence (UI), young females, QUID questionnaire.