Since 2009, the International Continence Control Association has defined the last week of June each year as “World Incontinence Week” to raise awareness of “urinary incontinence” —-, the fifth most common human disease, among stakeholders worldwide. Zhang Zhengwang, Department of Urology, East China Hospital, Fudan University
Urinary incontinence is a common disease that has plagued adults for a long time, especially middle-aged and elderly women. Although it is not a fatal disease, it brings a lot of inconvenience and embarrassment to people’s social activities and seriously affects people’s quality of life, making patients suffer from it, so it is also named “social cancer”. However, due to the constraints of traditional awareness, the current rate of incontinence is much lower than its incidence, often only one-fifth of people will take the initiative to go to the formal medical institutions.
Medical experts believe that urinary incontinence can be both prevented and cured. There are many clinical types of urinary incontinence, some of which are often associated with or secondary to other urological or female genital disorders, such as overactive bladder, neurogenic bladder, prostate enlargement in men or pelvic organ prolapse in women.
In order to effectively raise awareness of urinary incontinence among the affected population, the Department of Urology of East China Hospital of Fudan University has been organizing patient education activities on urinary incontinence and related diseases every year since 2009. To welcome the fourth “World Incontinence Week”, the hospital will hold another incontinence clinic, where Professors Zhang Zhengwang and Sun Zhongquan from the Department of Urology will provide comprehensive medical consultation services for patients with various types of incontinence. The clinic will be held on Saturday, June 16, 2012 from 13:00 to 15:00 in the outpatient hall of East China Hospital, No. 221 West Yan’an Road.