The prevalence of female urinary incontinence and reasons for not seeking treatment.

The prevalence of urinary incontinence in women aged 18 years and over was investigated by carrying out a telephone interview of 851 women randomly selected from the Dunedin electoral register. Two hundred and sixty seven (31%) of the women interviewed had some degree of incontinence in the preceding 12 months and 142 (17%) had had regular incontinence (two or more episodes of leakage per month). Daily incontinence occurred in approximately 5% of the women sampled with 2.3% being incontinent more than once per day or being continually incontinent. Only one third of those with regular incontinence had sought medical help for their problem. The commonest reasons for this were that either the incontinence was not seen as abnormal (81%) or there was a low expectation of benefit from treatment (10%). Thus there needs to be improved awareness that incontinence is treatable and that medical and surgical treatment options are available.