What is Overactive Bladder (OAB)?
In people with overactive bladder, the bladder contracts more often than it should, resulting in a sudden, compelling desire to pass urine, which is difficult to ignore.3 The medical term for this feeling is ‘urgency’. If a person is unable to pass urine (void) because of circumstances (e.g. they are caught in an elevator or stuck in traffic) then the desire to void can result in pain. Regardless of whether incontinence occurs or not, the discomfort of urgency is often accompanied by a distressing emotional fear of leakage.3
Other symptoms that commonly occur with OAB are:
- Frequency – a need to pass urine more frequently than normal (more than 8 times during the day)4
- Nocturia – having to get up more than twice in a night to pass urine4
Occasionally there may be other symptoms associated with passing urine,2 including:
- Weak or slow stream
- Intermittency (‘stopping and starting’)
- Hesitancy (difficulty in starting to pass urine, or having to wait before the urine comes)
- Straining (needing to ‘push’ to get the urine stream started)
- Dribbling towards the end of bladder emptying, or after finishing passing urine
