Joseph G. Ouslander, MD Professor of Medicine Director, Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology Chief of Medicine Wesley Woods Center on Aging at Emory University Atlanta, Georgia

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		Why is the rate of care for overactive bladder so low today?

Jump to bottom of the page You're asking me about the fact that there are lots of people, especially older people, with this symptom complex of an overactive bladder and some statistics suggest that only 1 in 5 are being treated. I don't know those statistics but we do know that consistently, if you interview older people at least, with bothersome urinary symptoms and ask how you talk to a health professional about these symptoms, half or less say yes. So part of the problem here is that older people are reluctant to talk about these things, which is why it's so important for family physicians and general internists to ask the screening questions we talked about before. Part of the problem there is that older people and sometimes their families see these symptoms of overactive bladder and incontinence as an inevitable consequence of getting older, and they view it in women, it's just like menstruation, that it's something they have to put up with. And it's very important for them to understand that these are common symptoms in older people but not everyone gets them, and they're abnormal, and they need to be evaluated and can be treated. Unfortunately, a lot of health professionals impart that idea, that this is an inevitable consequence of getting older and part of that is because many health professionals are agists; they don't like taking care of older people. But part of it is because they don't know what to do. So why ask a patient a question about a symptom if you don't have a treatment for the symptom. And that can be very uncomfortable for the health professional, so there's a big knowledge gap, both on the part of patients and their families, as well as on physicians, that I think can be remedied over time.

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