[Diagnosis and treatment alternatives to sexual disorders in women with urinary incontinence].

BACKGROUND: One difficulty that a woman with urinary incontinence faces up is quality and control of her sexual life, the more it is complicated the more it affects her in different ways. These complications require, as well as medical treatment, evaluation and special psychological intervention to integrally recovery.

OBJECTIVE: To know frequency and origin of sexual disturbances in women with urinary incontinence.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: Demographical, confirmatory, descriptive, transversal, retrospective with non-experimental design study. Seventy patients, ranging from 21 to 59-years-old, with diagnosis of urinary incontinence were selected. Three groups were conformed: Group 1, patients with sexual dysfunction before the manifestation of urinary incontinence; Group 2, patients with sexual dysfunction due to urinary incontinence, and Group 3, patients with no sexual problems neither before nor after the urinary incontinence problem. Codified Clinical History Form on Female Sexuality was used to classify patients; diagnosis was performed with the DSM-IV-TR.

RESULTS: Forty-six percent of patients had sexual dysfunctions (mainly dysrythmia and orgasmic disorder), 37% showed sexual disorder associated with urinary incontinence (dyspaurenia and hypoactive sexual desire), and 17% had no sexual problems.

CONCLUSIONS: As proper appraisal will define intervention strategies, patients with medical sexual problems must be evaluated by a psychology to establish diagnose and for adequate approach.