Prevalence of Urinary Incontinence and its Association with Chronic Constipation, Chronic Cough, Urinary Tract Infections, and Parity during the Third Trimester of Pregnancy

Abstract

Urinary incontinence (UI) refers to involuntary urine leakage. It can affect anyone, although it is more common among pregnant women. Incontinence is classified into three types: Stress, urge, and mixed urinary incontinence. Objective: To was to determine the prevalence of urinary incontinence and its association with chronic constipation, chronic cough, urinary tract infection, and parity during the third trimester of pregnancy. Methods: A cross-sectional analytical study was carried out in the twin cities of Pakistan between April 2022 and September 2022. The data were recruited from 184 pregnant women aged between 18-45 years, who were in their third trimester. A self-structured questionnaire was used to collect demographic data as well as assessments of parity, chronic cough, chronic constipation, and urinary tract infections. QUID was used to determine the kind of urine incontinence, and the ICIQ-UI-SF was employed to record the frequency and severity of the condition. Results: The average age of the participants was 27.8±4.7. Out of 184 participants, 91 had urine incontinence, with 52 (27.8%) having stress urinary incontinence and 39 (21.3%) having urge urinary incontinence. Urinary incontinence symptoms were severe (N=36, 19.1%) in most subjects and moderate (N=26, 14.2%) in others. Chronic cough and parity had a significant relationship with urine incontinence (p<0.05).  Conclusions: The results imply that urinary incontinence was moderately prevalent. Urge urine incontinence was less common than stress incontinence. Multiparity and chronic cough were strongly associated with UI.