So, urogynaecology is a subspecialty in gynaecology. And it's particularly focusing on women who have problems with their bladder. And that can either be stress incontinence, leaking with coughing, sneezing exercise or overactive bladder where you get a lot of urgency, you can sometimes leak with that urge and often associated with that is a lot of night time symptoms, getting up a lot in the night to pass urine.
And also it covers pelvic organ prolapse and that is where either the bladder, the bowel or even the uterus can drop down into the vagina. And that can give symptoms of a heaviness, a dragging, a feeling of a vaginal lump or some patients can even see a vaginal lump. The most common things that we see are definitely the stress incontinence and overactive bladder. Again at Benidorm, we will see patients for prolapse.
And I think if you're coming along or if you think you've got some symptoms of prolapse, come along and have a proper assessment in the Urogynaecology team, get some advice around pelvic floor exercises and all of the advice that the specialist nurses can give you. One of the most important things is obviously the pelvic floor exercises that we've always talked about. You want to avoid doing too much heavy lifting, too much carrying big pots of compost and garden pots down the garden. Don't be a smoker and have a chronic cough because that increases abdominal pressure. Try not to have things like chronic constipation. Again, anything that's going to involve bearing down straining can make symptoms of prolapse worse.
If you've got a urinary incontinence, it may just be that you've picked up these symptoms because you've had three children and large babies, difficult deliveries which has slightly weakened your pelvic floor. So, you know, some of these symptoms, actually, you probably can't prevent, but there's a lot of positive things you can do to treat them. We're really lucky at Benenden. We have three urogynecologists that work here, two male consultants and one female. They work very closely with the four specialist nurses so that we can give you a complete holistic multidisciplinary approach to your care.
