Prevalence of urinary incontinence, urinary tract infection and other voiding symptoms in Australian primary school children

P Sureshkumar, LPRoy, JF Knight, JC Craig

Centre for Kidney Research, Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children, Westmead NSW 2145, Australia.

Introduction. The prevalence of daytime urinary incontinence and other bladder symptoms in Australian children starting school is not known. A survey, consisting of a random cluster sample of primary school children was done to estimate these prevalences.
Method. The study was performed during the period between April 1998 and December 1998. A daytime incontinence questionnaire in six languages with good repeatability(mean kappa = 0.70) was sent to 2020 primary school children. In order to reduce the non-response bias, non responders were reminded at 2 weeks intervals with another copy of the questionnaire.
Results. The quesionnaire was returned by 1402(70.5%) primary school children with a mean(SD) age of 5.9(0.57) years.The prevalences of daytime urinary incontinence by definition of one or more episodes of wetting in the last 6 months, twice or more in the past month and wetting everyday was 19%(95% CI 16.3-21.7), 7%(95% CI 4.0-10.0) and 4%(95% CI 1.7-6.3) respectively. Of these daywetting children, only 15.8% of children sought medical help. Diurnal incontinence was reported almost equally in males and females and was usually combined with other bladder habits. The overall prevalence of urinary tract infections was 15%. Isolated bedwetting was found in 6.7% of children while combined day and night wetting was found to be 1.8% in boys and 2.5% in girls.
Conclusion. This study provides the first evidence that daytime incontinence in Australian children starting school is very common and only a small proportion of those seek medical help.

Presented at the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, Perth, May 1999

Correspondence
Premala Sureshkumar
PremalaS@chw.edu.au