Pelvic floor muscles work with the pelvic bones to support your lower body. Like the muscles that help you lift, they stabilize your pelvis and spine while improving pelvic floor strength. They are extremely important, especially in women during pregnancy, delivery, and recovery. They can also help you with incontinence, sexual function, and even your ability to walk.

However, due to trauma and stress, the pelvic floor muscles can become weakened or tight, leading to pelvic floor disorders, such as stress urinary incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse. These disorders are widely known and can significantly impact women's health and quality of life.

Practitioners have no shortage of public outreach options – but some strategies drive business more effectively than others. Whether you're trying to augment your patient base or build relationships with other healthcare providers in the community, expanding your primary care referral network is a good start.

Establishing a strong referral network can empower your brand to go further and reduce your marketing burden, freeing you to focus on caregiving. Here are five ways to drive referrals and help your practice succeed.

Urinary incontinence is the involuntary leakage of urine. Although it's commonly associated with geriatric health issues, this isn't just something that affects the elderly. For instance, it's more common among women than men – yet regularly used women's treatment plans often prove suboptimal.

There are a few major types of urinary incontinence, including urge, stress, and mixed. With stress urinary incontinence (SUI), caregivers and patients have access to a wide range of treatment options, but it's vital to get the diagnosis right first – and urological medicine plays a major role in effective treatment.

Most medical practitioners are well aware that few procedures are truly risk-free. While this seems obvious in the case of things like surgeries, treatment isn't the only area of concern when it comes to patient outcomes. Certain diagnostic procedures may also pose risks, making it vital to understand how to mitigate the hazards and optimize the quality of treatment.

Urodynamic studies (UDS) are a prime example of how an overwhelmingly benign procedure nonetheless demands attention to detail and experienced oversight. Here's what to know about UDS, conditions like bacteriuria and urinary tract infections (UTIs), and commonplace risk reduction strategies like the use of prophylactic antibiotics.

Urodynamics is a set of tests and procedures that measure lower urinary tract function. These tests are prescribed by urologists, gynecologists, or urogynecologists, and the results from the tests allow them to look at how a patient's lower urinary tract is working. The bladder, sphincters, and urethra (all parts of the lower urinary tract) work together to hold and release urine. Most urodynamic tests are concerned with measuring the ability of your bladder to hold and drain urine completely.

Urodynamics is a panel of tests relating to the lower urinary tract. It is most commonly used in its entirety; however, it is also possible that one or more of the components will be performed separately if symptoms suggest this is necessary.

Urodynamics is the most reliable way to determine the cause of lower urinary tract symptoms and therefore, the best way to determine which treatment methods are most appropriate.

A Care Pathway is an evidenced-based framework to build a treatment plan upon, beginning with the primary physician, continuing to specialist referrals if necessary, and following the patient through to the end of their treatment (including follow-up care).

They typically follow a common path that starts with patient history, followed by clinical assessment, provisional diagnosis, first line management, specialist management, and follow-up care.

Some examples are listed here:

When it comes to conditions of the lower urinary tract, there are key differences to consider in order to determine which form of testing is the most appropriate. While there are striking similarities between methods that can potentially create confusion upon first glance, a practitioner knows which test is most appropriate for the corresponding symptoms.

One area that has the potential to create this confusion is determining the difference between the need for the broader Urodynamics testing panel or the Cystometrogram. While these two procedures involve many of the same elements, they are in fact different.

This post will provide a detailed comparison of the two methods and describe how they are similar, but also different. First, a brief explanation of the two methods before we compare:

An aging US population brings unique challenges to urologists and the urology workforce in general. As the average age of the population increases, this means that the frequency of urologic diseases and need for urology-related treatments also increases, and it is having an effect on the industry in general as demand increases. These demographic changes in the United States are in turn changing the demands on the urology workforce, creating a need by professionals to have the latest data, research, education, and advocacy for a changing industry.

With the findings published in the American Urology Association’s 2020 census, along with comparisons with their previous publications, we can form a clear picture of what the urology workforce and industry has been through in the past, what it is currently dealing with as of the 2020 publication, and we can also infer educated predictions about the future to anticipate what urologists and urology professionals will need to prepare for in order to meet the growing demand for urology care.

Here is a summary of some of the key findings of the AUA’s 2020 census:

Urinary incontinence can provide health care professionals with a challenge that may seem like it requires surgery when there are in fact a range of nonsurgical and even non-pharmacological options that can be employed first. To experienced urologists, this will be apparent, however other healthcare professionals who do not have a full working knowledge of urodynamic testing along with urinary incontinence treatment options may choose surgery or medication when there are many steps that can be taken and explored before resorting to more invasive options.

An Overview of Urinary Incontinence

If you think you have been dealing with urinary incontinence, otherwise known as the involuntary loss of urine, you may be looking for a way to get tested. Testing for incontinence not only can confirm that you should be diagnosed, but it can also find the underlying causes and can lead you to treatment options. Today, we’re going to talk about urodynamics which is the main testing option for urinary incontinence.