Prevalence of urinary incontinence and its relation with sedentarism in Spain.

OBJECTIVES: To determine the prevalence of urinary incontinence in the elderly Spanish population of both sexes and identify a possible relationship between physical activity habits and the presence of urinary incontinence in the elderly.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: We used data from 8146 individuals older than 60 years (age range, 60-94 years), from which data from a 15-year cohort were obtained. Of these, 4745 (58.2%) were women and 3401 (41.8%) were men. We analysed the presence of urinary incontinence, physical activity habits and the influence of other variables such as sex, age, weight and body mass index.

RESULTS: We detected a prevalence of urinary incontinence of 15% for the women and 11.6% for the men. Those with urinary incontinence had a greater average age, weight and body mass index than the healthy participants. At the same time, the patient group with incontinence showed more sedentary habits compared with the healthy participants.

CONCLUSIONS: A strong relationship was observed between the body mass index and prevalence of urinary incontinence. Urinary incontinence was also related to attitudinal aspects such as physical inactivity, a behaviour that predisposes the elderly to developing incontinence. For the first time, we observed a reduction in the prevalence of incontinence compared with previous studies.