Epidemiological Profile and Attitudes of Pregnant Women Toward Urinary Incontinence: A Single-Center Cross-Sectional Study

The objective was to highlight the epidemiological and clinical profile of urinary incontinence in pregnant women during the first trimester and to determine their knowledge and attitudes toward this condition in Kinshasa.

We carried out a descriptive cross-sectional study among 127 pregnant women who came for prenatal consultations in the first trimester from January to March 2022 at the LISANGA Medical Centre in Kinshasa. A questionnaire was developed containing the Urinary Symptom Profile (USP) scale. Kolmogorov–Smirnov normality tests were used to determine the normality of the distribution of the study variables. Inferential statistics were performed.

The significance level was 0.05.

The mean age was 29.7±5.5 years. Thirty–eight women (29.9%) were primigravida. The median age of pregnancy was 6 weeks of amenorrhoea. The prevalence of urinary incontinence was 73.2%, with 31.2% of urge urinary incontinence and 16.1% of stress incontinence. In 61.4% of cases, overactive bladder was associated with urinary incontinence. Among the incontinent pregnant women, 3.2% had consulted a doctor while accepting that this condition is a health problem, 13.4% knew they had a pelvic floor muscle, 4.7% had knowledge of its rehabilitation, and 8.7% had benefited from gymnastics during pregnancy.

Urinary incontinence was frequent in the first trimester of pregnancy with a predominance of urgency. It was hardly discussed during prenatal consultations and pregnant women were not aware of the pelvic floor muscle, its rehabilitation, and of gymnastics during pregnancy.