Impact of female urinary incontinence and urgency on women's and their partners' sexual life.

Aims: To assess the impact of female urinary incontinence (UI) and urgency on women's and their partners' sexual life in sexually active couples and to elucidate the concordance of answers within couples.

Methods: Women aged 18-74 years with UI and/or urgency (n = 206) were consecutively recruited from four outpatient clinics. Those with a partner (n = 170) completed a questionnaire regarding relationship and sexual life and gave a similar questionnaire to him. The present paper focuses on 99 couples with an active sexual life.

Results: Twenty-two percent of the men and 43% of the women stated that the female urinary symptoms impaired their sexual life. Forty-nine percent of the women expressed worries about having urinary leakage during sexual activity, but most of their men, 94%, did not. Twenty-three percent of the men and 39% of the women responded that the woman leaked urine during sexual activity. The majority, 84%, of women considered this a problem, but 65% of their partners did not. Except for this disparity, the rest of the answers were significant concordant within the couples.

Conclusions: Female UI and urgency negatively affected sexual life in almost half of the women and in every fifth partner. A need for information and advice concerning sexual issues due to the woman's urinary disorder was found in one fifth of the couples. The majority of women with urinary leakage during sexual activities considered this as a problem, but most of their partners did not. Overall, the concordance of the answers within the couples was high.