Neurogenic bladder in patients with traumatic spinal cord injury: treatment and follow-up

Multi-center, cross-sectional study. Our aim was to evaluate the treatment methods and follow-up of neurogenic bladder in patients with traumatic spinal cord injury retrospectively using a questionnaire. Turkey. Three hundred and thirty-seven patients who had spinal cord injury for at least 2 years were enrolled from six centers in the neurogenic bladder study group. They were asked to fill-out a questionnaire about treatments they received and techniques they used for bladder management. The study included 246 male and 91 female patients with a mean age of 42±14 years. Intermittent catheterization (IC) was performed in 77.9% of the patients, 3.8% had indwelling catheters, 13.8% had normal spontaneous micturition, 2.6% performed voiding maneuvers, 1.3% used diapers and 0.6% used condom catheters. No gender difference was found regarding the techniques used in bladder rehabilitation (P>0.05). Overall, 63.2% of patients used anticholinergic drugs; anticholinergic drug use was similar between genders (P>0.05). The most common anticholinergic drug used was oxybutynin (40.3%), followed by trospium (32.6%), tolterodine (19.3%) darifenacin (3.3%), propiverine (3.3%) and solifenacin (1.1%). The specialties of the physicians who first prescribed the anticholinergic drug were physiatrists (76.2%), urologists (22.1%) and neurologists (1.7%). Only four patients had previously received injections of botulinum-toxin-A into the detrusor muscle and three of them stated that their symptoms showed improvement. Most of the patients (77%) had regular follow-up examinations, including urine cultures, urinary system ultrasound and urodynamic tests, when necessary; the reasons for not having regular control visits were living distant from hospital (15.3%) and monetary problems (7.7%). Of the patients, 42.7% did not experience urinary tract infections (UTI), 36.4% had bacteriuria but no UTI episodes with fever, 15.9% had 1-2 clinical UTI episodes per year and 5% had ⩾3 clinical UTIs. The clinical characteristics of patients with and without UTI (at least one symptomatic UTI during 1 year) were similar (P>0.05). The frequency of symptomatic UTI was similar in patients using different bladder management techniques (P>0.05). The most frequently used technique for bladder rehabilitation in patients with SCI was IC (77.9%). In all, 63.2% of patients used anticholinergic drugs, oxybutynin being the most commonly used drug. Also, 77% of patients had regular control visits for neurogenic bladder; 42.7% did not experience any UTIs.