Axonics® Therapy May Be Able to Remedy Your Overactive Bladder

You used to enjoy getting out of the house — going on a hike with your family or to a concert with friends. These days, you feel less comfortable venturing out because of overactive bladder (OAB) syndrome, and your world has shrunk. You’re not alone — about 30% of men and 40% of women are living with some degree of OAB in the United States.

If you want to break free from the confines of overactive bladder syndrome, the team of health experts here at Arizona Urology can help. We specialize in continence issues and take pride in offering advanced, long-term solutions, which include Axonics® Therapy.

Here’s a look at how Axonics Therapy can help you take charge of your life again when you have issues like OAB and fecal incontinence.

A brief look at OAB and fecal incontinence

The primary side effect of OAB is a sudden and uncontrollable urge to urinate, which may be accompanied by leakage. These urges can be frequent and occur throughout the night, as well.

Under normal circumstances, when your bladder is filling up or full, nerves relay messages to your brain, and your brain responds by sending a message back to your bladder muscles to squeeze. This pressure forces urine through a sphincter and into your urethra for expulsion.

When you have OAB, the messaging between your bladder and your brain is garbled, and your muscles squeeze more often, even when your bladder isn’t full.

This same scenario can develop in your bowel, and you may experience sudden and intense urges to have a bowel movement.

Interrupting the overactive messaging

Axionic Therapy aims to interrupt the overactive messaging between your bladder (or bowel) and your brain using sacral neuromodulation.

To do this, we place four leads that release mild electrical impulses near one of the sacral nerve roots in your lower spine. These impulses are designed to interrupt the irregular communication between your bladder and/or bowel and your brain.

To power the leads, we also implant a tiny generator just under the skin in your upper buttock. You control this generator with a remote, which puts you in charge of the treatment.

Before we implant the generator in your buttock, we perform a quick trial period, during which we implant the electrodes and use an external generator to determine whether the neuromodulation will work for your continence issues.

If Axonics Therapy successfully controls your OAB or fecal incontinence — 93% of Axionics patients achieve clinically significant improvements — we implant the generator, which should provide you with years of relief.

This small generator is effective and easy to use, and you can still undergo most full-body MRIs with it in place.

If you want to explore whether Axonics Therapy is right for your OAB or fecal incontinence, please contact one of our locations in Goodyear, Gilbert, or Glendale, Arizona, to set up a consultation.