World Continence Week 2023

As a global initiative, World Continence Week aims to raise awareness of bladder and bowel issues, chronic pelvic pain, and other conditions that impact the lives of patients and carers. The World Continence Week 2023 theme is focused on Commitment to Collaboration in Continence Care, introducing the 4 C’s project.

Urinary incontinence impacts people affected by bladder cancer. Troublesome urinary symptoms such as burning and irritation when peeing or incontinence issues after treatment are common side-effects. Urinary incontinence is also called loss of bladder control. It is an involuntary loss of urine or the inability to control urination.

Cancer patients describe bladder incontinence as:

• Accidental urine leakage that sometimes can dampen underwear or might be severe enough to saturate clothes
• Having a sense of urgency or being unable to “hold urine”
• Frequent urination
• Pain or discomfort when urinating

Urinary incontinence can manifest due to bladder cancer tumours or structural changes to the urethra. Oftentimes this symptom is overlooked due to the prevalence of urinary symptoms in the aging population, which overlaps with the demographic of patients that are most commonly diagnosed with bladder cancer. For this reason, it is important that changes in urinary habits be fully examined by healthcare professionals.

Our member organisation in the United Kingdom, Fight Bladder Cancer, has useful resources on coping with continence challenges and living with bladder cancer.

The World Continence Week (WCW) is an annual initiative developed by the World Federation of Incontinence and Pelvic Problems (WFIPP), in partnership with the International Continence Society (ICS) and the European Association of Urology (EAU) and the Ibero-American Society of Neurology and Urogynecology(SINUG).

More information about World Continence Week here.

You can find out more about the challenges of urinary problems faced by people living with prostate and bladder cancer from the ‘P’ Word event that we co-chaired in the European Parliament last December.