Anybody tried biofeedback for urinary incontinence?

[saramoll]

7 year old daughter has irritable bladder, but also giggle incontinence. Stool witholding too! Anyway she started oxybutinin a couple of weeks ago. She thinks it is helping with the sudden urges to wee, but it's not reduced the number of wet accidents as they are laughter related. The paediatrician said to increase the dose after 2 weeks if it didn't solve the wetting but I'm hesitant as she seems to be getting bad tummy pains from the drug. We were given instructions for pelvic floor exercises, they are aimed at teenagers and the Dr said she is likely too young to understand which muscles to work and that can lead to constipation ( great for a with holder!). But I have seen some reports where biofeedback has been very successful in treating giggle incontinence by helping young children learn which muscles to excercise. I wonder if anyone has any experience of this, and where is it available? I would happily​ take her privately and pay for it if I thought it would help.

[Georgina1475]

Got to be honest I had to look it up as hadn't heard of it. Have you had any luck with finding someone in your area?

Are you in contact with an Incontinence nurse/centre as that might have more information.

[Ke_thomas01]

My 10 year old granddaughter has giggle incontinence and so far nothing has worked for her. A lot of the drugs they tried her on had horrible side effects especially the Ritalin. Is your daughter under the evalina? I sympathise with you as it is a horrible, traumatic condition and has started to affect my granddaughter psychologically as she is approaching puberty. She is due to start secondary school soon and both my daughter and myself are dreading it as children can be so cruel. I have heard about bio feedback and at her next hospital appointment I will ask them about it. As nothing is working they want to inject her bladder with Botox but I would rather try bio feedback first as they said that injection has a small chance of stopping her bladder from working and she would have to wear a catheter for 6 months!! Can you imagine that when starting a new school!

[saramoll in reply to Ke_thomas01]

At the moment I'm keeping my fingers crossed for my girl. She was started on oxybutinin ( for her irritable bladder, but obviously won't help giggle incontinence). But, it seems to have stopped the accidents completely, indicating that it's not real giggle incontinence at all. The paediatrician sent us a leaflet on doing pelvic floor excercises, but it is very hard to explain to a 7 yr old how to do them! I've read whatever I could find about biofeedback, and people claim that it can really help as the patient can learn to very quickly gain control of the muscles and stop the urine flow before a full wet accident has happened. It would surely be worth a try for your granddaughter if nothing else has worked. Fingers crossed for her.

[Ke_thomas01]

So glad it's working for your daughter. My granddaughter has tried every drug going. Oxybutinin was the first one. Nothing works. She has had eurodynamics testing which showed it was true giggle incontinence and because it's so rare they are at a loss what to try next hence Botox. Apparently GI is caused by the brain losing control over her bladder muscle whenever she laughs. I have read about bio feedback and going to push for it at our next appointment

[Charlie5angel]

My daughter had biofeedback training, we had it in the Evelina hospital, it basically gets your child to train the muscles around pelvic floor, they attach tracers to the stomach and near the opening of the bottom, then my daughter had to watch this video where she had the control of the cartoon figures in the screen by pulling the muscles (pelvic floor) and pushing out her tummy and seeing the other character on the screen going up and down on the screen, it's very clever but unfortunately it didn't work for my daughter but I hear it works for many others, good luck, I hope your daughter finds it helpful xx