Pacemaker offers hope for patients with overactive bladders

Most women are aware of the health benefits of having an active heart, an active lifestyle and an active social life.

An active bladder is a different matter-especially if “active” happens to become “overactive.”

Experts estimate that about 15 percent of middle-aged women have overactive bladders, a condition also known as excessive urinary frequency and urgent urination. That incidence climbs to 30 percent as women approach their 70s. Some women control their leakage or need to urinate frequently with pelvic exercise, others with daily medication. But for those whose overactive bladders aren’t settled by standard therapies, urologists at UW Hospital and Clinics now have another option: a pacemaker for bladder function.

Minneapolis-based company MedTronic developed the therapy device, the technical term for which is InterStim. According to Wade Bushman, the head of UW Hospital and Clinics’ Bladder Clinic, the device has proven effective in more than 50 percent of patients who have failed standard therapies.

“In the right patient, it can work wonders,” he says. “InterStim can alleviate urgency and leakage, and dramatically improve an active woman’s quality of life.”

Surgeons place a tiny electrode near a particular nerve that travels from the base of the spine to the bladder. They attach a pacemaker that the patient wears for about two weeks on a belt outside her body. The pacemaker sends mild electrical pulses to the nerve to help control erratic bladder function.

“If pacing improves the patient’s symptoms, we install it permanently in the upper portion of the patient’s buttocks, where it resides as long as it’s needed,” says Bushman.

Bushman stresses that the InterStim device is ideally for active patients ages of 40 to 60 who have failed standard therapies.

“For patients with difficult-to-control bladder activity, this is a significant addition to the portfolio of treatment options,” says Bushman.