It’s something few women like to talk about and one many suffer with in silence – Stress Urinary Incontinence. Now, a new treatment option, done right in the doctor’s office, is available to women in Oklahoma.

Stress Urinary Incontinence is a common condition in women often caused by physical changes resulting from pregnancy, childbirth or menopause. It’s characterized by urine leakage when a woman laughs, coughs, sneezes or performs other movements that put pressure on the bladder.

“So anytime you cough or sneeze, those pelvic floor muscles don’t pull back up like they’re supposed to do to prevent leakage of urine,” said Abbas Shobeiri, MD of OU Physicians and the state of Oklahoma's first urogynecologist. He added stress urinary incontinence is the most common type bladder control problem in younger and middle-aged women. “One thing that we have been trying to do in Oklahoma is actually bring it out into the open, so people can actually talk about it because we do have so many treatments available for it these days.”

Recently, Shobeiri became the first physician in Oklahoma to offer a new, innovative treatment for stress urinary incontinence.

In the procedure, Shobeiri injects a new, FDA approved bulking agent into the tissue around the patient’s urethra, the thin tube that carries urine from the body. The agent is a space-filling substance that adds bulk to the tissue, expanding it so it helps the pelvic floor muscles do their job, close the urethra and prevent leakage.

Shobeiri explained the new injectible material marks a definite improvement over other injectible materials that have been used to treat stress urinary incontinence.

“We had collagen,” he remarked, “but that required skin testing and it broke down so it required frequent injections that did not have long-lasting effect. The results were unsatisfactory. Then there were carbon particles, which are still in use. However, for the most part, they need to be done in the operating room. You can’t use them in an office setting.”

The new material offers a minimally invasive alternative that can be done in the doctor’s office in just minutes. It can be done under local anesthesia and allows most women to resume routine activities the same day.

Shobeiri said the treatment also can be tailored for each patient. “We intentionally do not inject too much of the new material because if you come back in a month or two and say I still have some residual incontinence, we can inject again. So we can start calibrating it to your needs.”

The procedure is also covered by most insurance companies. For more information, call OU Physicians at 271-2222.