Incontinence treatment

#This invention relates to the treatment of urinary incontinence.

#Urinary incontinence is of course a well known medical problem and many attempts have been made to provide methods of treatment. However, none of the methods previously proposed have proved to be as successful as desired.

#It is therefore an object of the invention to provide an improved method for treating urinary incontinence.

#Two specific examples of treatment will now be given. The first example is of a person with urge incontinence and the second example is of a person with stress incontinence. In each example, EMG signal readings and other information are given for an initial session and for the subsequent second, third, fourth and fifth sessions which occurred at weekly intervals. It will be noted that the EMG signal readings are taken when the person is sitting and when the person is standing, and that each reading is taken twice to avoid errors caused by spurious readings.

#The dramatic improvement by the fifth session is readily apparent. In some cases, as in this example, it is necessary also to measure abdominal muscle activity and to condition the person to lessen such muscle contraction when contracting the pelvic floor muscles. In this example, no neuromuscular stimulation was required.

#Again, the dramatic improvement by the fifth session is readily apparent. In this example, it was not necessary to monitor abdominal muscle activity. However, neuromuscular stimulation was applied.