Overactive bladder
syndrome characterized by urinary urgency, usually with frequency and nocturia, with or without urgency urinary incontinence
Overactive bladder (OAB) is a common condition where there is a frequent feeling of needing to urinate to a degree that it negatively affects a person's life. Overactive bladder is characterized by a group of four symptoms: urgency, urinary frequency, nocturia, and urge incontinence.
Urinary frequency is defined as urinating more than about 7-8 times in one day. The frequent need to urinate may occur during the day, at night, or both. The number of episodes varies depending on sleep, fluid intake, medications, and up to seven is considered normal if consistent with the other factors.
In addition, patients with OAB experience urinary urgency, a sudden feeling that they have to get to the bathroom very quickly.
Lastly, they may experience nocturia, which is waking up at night to urinate.
Loss of bladder control (urge incontinence) is a form of urinary incontinence characterized by the involuntary loss of urine occurring for no apparent reason while feeling urinary urgency as discussed above, and often occurs with this condition. This condition is also sometimes characterized by a sudden and involuntary contraction of the bladder muscles, in response to excitement or anticipation.
OAB is distinct from stress urinary incontinence (SUI), but when they occur together, the condition is usually known as mixed urinary incontinence.
“Overactive bladder” enters the record as syndrome characterized by urinary urgency, usually with frequency and nocturia, with or without urgency urinary incontinence. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Overactive, bladder and syndrome can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Overactive bladder” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.