If this is not your name, click here.
| | If this is not your name, click here. | | |
| | Contact Us | Order Now | Journals | Bookstore | Register a colleague | | |
| |  Adult Bed Wetting May Be Treated With Oxygen Mask LONDON -- May 30, 1997 -- Professor Steers and Dr Suratt of the University of Virginia, USA, report in a Research Letter in this week's The Lancet, the successful treatment of a 60-year-old man who was incontinent of urine (enuresis) at night after a prostate operation. He wet the bed on average twice a night and none of the usual medical treatments had any effect. His wife reported that he snored, gasped, and had irregular breathing when he was asleep. The doctors suspected that he had sleep apnea, a condition where people stop breathing or breathe shallowly when they are asleep, causing a shortage of oxygen in the body. Measuring his breathing and the oxygen concentration in his blood when he was asleep confirmed this diagnosis. The doctors advised treatment with nasal continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) ventilation at night. This involves wearing an air-tight mask over mouth and nose and breathing in air which has been compressed. The man stopped having sleep apnea with this treatment and he also stopped wetting the bed. It is not known exactly how correcting sleep apnea helps with bladder control. It may be that the part of the brain which controls bladder function is affected by a reduction of oxygen in the blood. The authors suggest that in adults who have nocturnal incontinence (about 1% of the population), "The onset of enuresis...in an adult with a history suspicious of apnea should prompt sleep evaluation" and they conclude that "Nasal CPAP may correct both incontinence and apnea."
|
