Urinary bladder diseases and their therapy

Urinary bladder diseases encompass a wide spectrum of conditions from clearly defined anatomic injury (e.g., by tumor, trauma, infection,

post-radiation injury) to more difficult-to-define functional control of urination (e.g., enuresis, incontinence). Bladder diseases present as

a variety of uncomfortable symptoms (dysuria, pollakiuria, nycturia) and, often, as a change in urine color (hematuria, pyuria). The most

frequent pathological entity affecting mostly women is infectious cystitis, both acute and recurrent or chronic. Likewise, more than 50 %

of women have to cope with some degree of incontinence, most often stress incontinence, at one or another point of their lifetime. In

cases where conservative therapy involving body weight reduction, exercise designed to strengthen the pelvic floor, pharmacotherapy

using, e.g., anticholinergics, and electrostimulation has failed, surgical management is opted for with moderate degrees of incontinence.

Techniques employing polypropylene bands (mini-invasive sling procedures) have been synonymous with a more up-to-date, rapid, and

less risk-associated approach to the treatment of stress-related incontinence. Another major group includes bladder tumors frequently

found in men and women and requiring costly and challenging therapy, most importantly because of high recurrence rates. Treatment of

the above conditions should only be undertaken by a erudite urologist with in close collaboration with other specialists from diagnostic

centers as well as from departments of oncology, gynecology, and nephrology.

Keywords: acute cystitis, recurent cystitis, neurogenic bladder, incontinence, bladder tumors