ABSTRACT
Urinary incontinence is a prevalent clinical problem throughout the world, which, for many women, remains undeclared to their health care practitioner. Urinary stress incontinence (USI), as recently defined by the International Continence Society (1), is the complaint of involuntary leakage of urine during effort or exertion, or during sneezing or coughing. To date, more than 200 surgical procedures have been described for the treatment of USI. While many of these are simply modifications of the same procedure, no particular method has been universally embraced as the definitive surgical solution for women with this chronic condition. Surgery is customarily recommended after the failure or personal rejection of conservative treatment modalities, which provide short-term cure rates up to 50% from a sustained program of behavior modification combined with pelvic floor therapy (2).
