Prevalence and incidence of urinary incontinence in the elderly: a longitudinal study in South Australia.
OBJECTIVE
To identify the prevalence, incidence and trend of urinary incontinence in the elderly over a two-year period.


METHODS
We randomly selected 4187 elderly people using the State Electoral Data Base in South Australia. Questionnaire surveys were conducted in 1992 with a response rate of 53.4%. The following two surveys were conducted 12 and 24 months later. A total of 2087 elderly people completed all three surveys.


RESULTS
Urge incontinence had a higher prevalence rate, with 36.6% to 41.6% of the elderly having at least an occasional problem (with 7.5% to 9.6% having problems often), compared to 23.4% to 28.8% having at least an occasional problem with stress incontinence (with 3.3% to 5.0% having problems often). Combined incontinence and urge incontinence were more common than stress incontinence alone. The incidence rates of urge incontinence and stress incontinence were 19.8% (with 3.1% often) and 14.5% (with 1.9% often), respectively. The trends toward incontinence during the two-year period indicated increasing trends in the elderly.


CONCLUSIONS
Urinary incontinence is an important health problem in the elderly and our data show that it has an increasing trend for future.
Liu
Chaojie
C
Department of Social Medicine, West China University of Medical Sciences, Chengdu 610041, China. liuchaojie@hotmail.com
Andrews
Gary R
GR
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D015995:Prevalence; D013021:South Australia / Q000453:epidemiology; D014549:Urinary Incontinence / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000209:etiology