The study, led by Alexandre Dukundane and colleagues, took a phenomenological qualitative approach, a method designed to capture lived experience in depth rather than simply measure prevalence. Researchers worked across four hospitals in Kigali: Masaka, Rwanda Military, Kibagabaga, and King Faisal. Using purposive sampling, they recruited 20 women between the ages of 20 and 70, all living with urinary incontinence. Through interviews and thematic analysis, applying both deductive and inductive coding, the team distilled the women’s experiences into four key themes: significant knowledge gaps about the condition, regular use of digital devices and the internet, specific barriers to trusting and affording digital health information, and a strong appetite for multimodal digital education platforms.

The first theme is perhaps the most sobering. Many participants misunderstood urinary incontinence at a fundamental level, often confusing it with a normal feature of aging or attributing their symptoms to unrelated conditions. This confusion had cascading consequences. Women delayed seeking diagnosis, endured emotional distress, withdrew from social life, and in some cases suffered financial strain as they cycled through ineffective coping strategies. Contributing factors for the condition include genetics, childbirth injury, and chronic disease, and effective treatments exist, ranging from medication and surgery to pelvic floor muscle training, a structured exercise approach that strengthens the muscles supporting the bladder. Yet without accurate baseline knowledge, women had no way to connect their symptoms to these options.

The emotional and social toll described in the study extends far beyond the physical inconvenience of leakage. Participants reported fear of public accidents, isolation, and a reduced overall quality of life. In many communities, the stigma surrounding incontinence keeps women silent, and that silence feeds the misconception cycle. When a woman believes her symptoms are simply an inevitable part of growing older or a private shame not worth mentioning to a clinician, she may spend years, even decades, without a proper assessment. The researchers argue that this is precisely where education, delivered in accessible and destigmatizing formats, could intervene earlier and change trajectories.

What makes the Kigali findings particularly compelling is the second theme: the women in the study were not digitally excluded in the way conventional assumptions might suggest. Participants regularly used digital devices and the internet, recognized their benefits, and considered them affordable for accessing health information. This is a crucial insight for public health planners. The infrastructure for digital health education already reaches into the daily lives of many women in urban Rwanda, and the study notes that healthcare systems across Africa are increasingly adopting digital technologies, including WhatsApp and social media platforms, to support patient education and professional collaboration among clinicians.

Previous research has shown that digital platforms can genuinely help women manage urinary incontinence, particularly through guided pelvic floor muscle training delivered via mobile applications and messaging services. Structured exercise programs, when properly taught and sustained, are a first-line treatment for many types of incontinence, and digital delivery can lower the threshold for adherence by providing reminders, demonstrations, and privacy. The Kigali study suggests that the raw ingredients for such interventions, namely device ownership, internet familiarity, and motivation, are present among the very population that stands to benefit.

Yet the third theme tempers this optimism with hard realities. Participants described distrust in the accuracy of online health information, a skepticism that is not irrational in an environment where misinformation circulates freely and where the provenance of a health claim is often impossible to verify. They also cited financial constraints in maintaining digital devices and paying for internet services, barriers that can turn a nominally connected life into an intermittent one. A woman may own a smartphone but ration her data, or share a device with family members, limiting the privacy needed to explore sensitive health topics. Any digital education strategy, the authors imply, must confront both the trust deficit and the cost barrier head-on.

The fourth theme ties the findings together: participants expressed a strong interest in multimodal digital health education platforms to receive information about urinary incontinence. Multimodal, in this context, means combining formats such as text, audio, video, and interactive messaging so that content reaches women with different literacy levels, device capabilities, and learning preferences. The researchers conclude that there is an urgent need for accessible and trustworthy digital health education to bridge knowledge gaps, provide support, and enhance the management of urinary incontinence among affected women. Trust, they suggest, is best earned through content developed with clinical credibility and cultural sensitivity, potentially delivered through channels women already use and already associate with their care providers.

The implications reach well beyond Rwanda’s capital. Urinary incontinence affects hundreds of millions of women, and the gap between prevalence and treatment access is widest in low- and middle-income settings where specialist pelvic health services are scarce. Digital education cannot replace surgical or pharmacological care, but it can perform a triage function that is arguably just as important: informing women that their symptoms have a name, that the condition is not an inevitable consequence of childbirth or age, and that effective, often conservative treatments exist. Early education could shift women from silent endurance toward timely diagnosis, reducing the emotional distress and social withdrawal documented in the study.

For the 20 women of Kigali who shared their experiences, the study’s message is one of cautious hope. They described a condition that has shaped their lives in silence, but they also described a readiness, an explicit request, for knowledge delivered through the phones and platforms that already sit in their pockets. The challenge now falls to health system designers, app developers, and clinicians: to build digital health education that is accurate, affordable, and trusted. If they succeed, one of the most common and most hidden disorders in women’s health may finally begin to lose its stigma, one message at a time.

Subject of Research: Digital health education needs among women with urinary incontinence in Kigali, Rwanda

Article Title: Digital health education needs for women with urinary incontinence in Kigali Rwanda, a phenomenological qualitative study

Article References: Dukundane, A., Murekatete, R., Opiyo, J., Keyser, L., McKinney, J., Nambaziira, R., & Ojiambo, R. (2026). Digital health education needs for women with urinary incontinence in Kigali Rwanda, a phenomenological qualitative study. PLOS Global Public Health, 6(10), e0006703. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0006703

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgph.0006703

Keywords: urinary incontinence, digital health, women's health, Rwanda, Kigali, pelvic floor muscle training, qualitative research, health education, mHealth, PLOS Global Public Health, health misinformation, Sub-Saharan Africa

The numbers are striking. Before their fractures, 45 percent of the men already had urinary incontinence and 12 percent had fecal incontinence, and nearly all of the men with fecal incontinence — 59 out of 66 — also leaked urine. One year after the fracture, 34 percent of the cohort had died. Mean survival time declined in a stepwise fashion with worsening continence: continent men survived a mean of 312 days, men with urinary incontinence alone 269 days, and men with fecal incontinence, with or without co-existing urinary incontinence, only 217 days. The pattern held even before any statistical adjustment, hinting that continence status captures something fundamental about an older patient’s physiological reserve.

To understand whether incontinence was merely a marker or a genuine prognostic factor, the researchers turned to Cox proportional hazards regression, the standard statistical tool for modeling time-to-event outcomes. In models adjusted for age alone, both urinary and fecal incontinence were associated with one-year mortality. But when the full multivariable model was fitted — incorporating age, polypharmacy, mobility, nutritional status, comorbidity as measured by the American Society of Anesthesiologists risk score, living arrangements, and the timing of urinary catheter removal — a clear divergence emerged. Fecal incontinence retained its independent predictive power, carrying a hazard ratio of 1.72, meaning men with fecal incontinence faced roughly a 72 percent higher risk of death within the year compared to continent men with otherwise similar characteristics. Urinary incontinence, by contrast, lost its statistical significance once other factors were accounted for.

This dissociation between the two types of incontinence is the study’s most consequential finding, and it aligns with a growing body of evidence. A large community-based cohort study by Jamieson and colleagues previously showed that among older adults with complex needs, fecal incontinence — but not urinary incontinence — independently predicted mortality. The Finnish team’s results extend that pattern to the specific and notoriously high-risk population of men with hip fracture, a group that already suffers disproportionately poor outcomes compared with women: men tend to fracture at a younger age but carry more comorbidity, experience more post-operative complications, and die more frequently during the first post-fracture year.

Why would fecal incontinence, in particular, signal impending death? The authors point to the concept of accelerated physiological decline. Prior longitudinal research has shown that older adults with fecal incontinence experience faster deterioration in physical performance over four years of follow-up than their continent peers, and fecal incontinence has been established as an independent risk factor for falls in frail individuals. A recent nationally representative analysis added a molecular dimension to the picture, finding that phenotypic age acceleration — an estimate of biological aging derived from an array of clinical biomarkers — partially mediated the association between fecal incontinence and mortality. In other words, losing bowel control may be an outward manifestation of a body aging faster than its chronological years, a hypothesis the study’s authors treat as the most plausible underlying driver of the mortality link.

Urinary incontinence tells a different story. Although it was highly prevalent and associated with shorter survival in crude analyses, its apparent prognostic signal dissolved after adjustment for comorbidity and frailty. The researchers interpret this to mean that urinary incontinence primarily reflects the underlying disability and frailty of the affected individual rather than conferring independent risk on its own. This interpretation is consistent with the team’s earlier work in older women with hip fracture, in which neither urinary incontinence nor double incontinence independently predicted mortality, despite a similar stepwise worsening of survival with worsening continence status. The other independent predictors of death in the multivariable model — being 80 or older, taking ten or more daily medications, non-independent mobility, poor nutritional status as measured by the Mini-Nutritional Assessment Short Form, and delayed removal of the urinary catheter — paint a coherent portrait of the vulnerable, depleted patient.

The catheter finding deserves particular attention because it is one of the few modifiable factors in the list. Men whose urinary catheters were removed after hospital discharge rather than during the initial admission had a hazard ratio of 1.50 for one-year mortality. Prolonged catheterization is a care-related factor, and current guidelines recommend minimizing unnecessary catheter use. Yet the authors caution against a simple causal reading: delayed catheter removal may also reflect greater frailty and clinical complexity, meaning the catheter could be a consequence of poor health rather than a cause of death. Disentangling the two would require prospective interventional studies testing whether optimized catheter management actually improves outcomes — a research gap the study explicitly identifies.

The second half of the analysis shifted from mortality to function. Of the original cohort, 331 men survived long enough to attend a comprehensive geriatric assessment at the hospital’s outpatient clinic a median of six months after the fracture, performed by a multidisciplinary team including a geriatric nurse, a physiotherapist, and a geriatrician. At that visit, 47 percent had urinary incontinence. Binary logistic regression revealed that two factors tripled the odds of urinary incontinence: a known diagnosis of cognitive disorder (odds ratio 3.22) and non-independent mobility (odds ratio 3.07). Within the assessment itself, abnormal scores on the mini mental state examination, the Lawton and Brody instrumental activities of daily living scale, the Elderly Mobility Scale, and the Timed Up and Go test each remained independently associated with urinary incontinence after multivariable adjustment.

These associations underscore the syndromic nature of incontinence in geriatric medicine. Cognitive impairment and incontinence are closely intertwined, with incontinence rates substantially higher among cognitively impaired individuals, and cognitive impairment is itself linked to physical frailty, falls, and elevated hip fracture risk. Among hip fracture patients, known or newly identified cognitive impairment has been reported in up to half of cases, which may partly explain the high incontinence rates observed in this population. Clinically, cognitively impaired hip fracture patients tend to reach the emergency department later and in worse condition, and they face increased risks of complications and death. For men — who already carry a disproportionately heavy burden of mortality after hip fracture — the coexistence of cognitive impairment and urinary incontinence may flag a particularly high-risk subgroup deserving intensified follow-up.

The study has limitations that the authors acknowledge candidly. Incontinence was assessed with brief structured questions rather than validated continence questionnaires, chosen deliberately to maximize response rates in a population with substantial cognitive impairment, but this meant the severity, frequency, and subtype of incontinence went unrecorded. No data were available on urological conditions such as benign prostatic enlargement or prior prostate surgery, leaving room for residual confounding. The retrospective design, the decade-long data collection window, and the high mortality itself — which removed the frailest patients before the outpatient assessment — likely led to underestimates of incontinence prevalence at follow-up and prevented reliable modeling of fecal incontinence as an outcome. Still, the cohort’s inclusiveness, with no losses to mortality follow-up and nearly a third of participants having a cognitive disorder, strengthens its real-world relevance. The practical message is straightforward: routine continence assessment covering both bladder and bowel should be part of every comprehensive geriatric evaluation after hip fracture in men, because a simple question about control may reveal which patients are quietly facing the gravest risks.

Subject of Research: Prevalence and prognostic significance of urinary and fecal incontinence in older men after hip fracture

Article Title: Fecal and urinary incontinence in older men with hip fracture: a geriatric syndrome with prognostic significance

Article References: Hellman-Bronstein, A. T., Luukkaala, T. H., Ala-Nissilä, S. S., & Nuotio, M. S. (2026). Fecal and urinary incontinence in older men with hip fracture: a geriatric syndrome with prognostic significance. European Geriatric Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41999-026-01624-6

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s41999-026-01624-6

Keywords: hip fracture, fecal incontinence, urinary incontinence, older men, geriatric syndrome, mortality, comprehensive geriatric assessment, cognitive impairment, frailty, polypharmacy, urinary catheter, Finland

The research, led by Ferdinand Anokwuru and Scott R. Bauer with colleagues at the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, the San Francisco Coordinating Center, the University of Pittsburgh, Wake Forest University, and other institutions, drew on baseline data from the Study of Muscle, Mobility and Aging, known as SOMMA. This cohort was designed to uncover the cellular biology behind age-related loss of mobility, and it gave the team an unusual opportunity. Rather than relying on questionnaires alone, the investigators measured the actual physiology of energy production and energy expenditure in 629 community-dwelling adults aged seventy and older, then asked whether those measurements tracked with the severity of lower urinary tract symptoms.

The technical core of the study rests on three quantities. The first is VO2peak, the maximum rate of oxygen consumption a person can achieve during a symptom-limited treadmill cardiopulmonary exercise test using a modified Balke protocol. This is the classic measure of cardiorespiratory fitness, the ceiling of the body’s aerobic engine. The second is the energetic cost of walking, abbreviated ECw, defined here as the average oxygen consumption while walking slowly at a fixed treadmill speed of 0.67 meters per second for five minutes. This captures how metabolically expensive it is for an individual to perform one of the most fundamental tasks of daily life. The third quantity is the cost-capacity ratio, or CCR, calculated as one hundred times the energetic cost of walking divided by VO2peak. In plain terms, the CCR expresses what fraction of a person’s total aerobic capacity is consumed simply by walking at a slow pace.

The logic behind the cost-capacity ratio is what makes this study conceptually striking. Two older adults can have identical walking costs but very different fitness levels, and two can have identical fitness levels but very different walking costs. Only the ratio captures the lived experience of effort. When the energy required to move approaches the energy available to move, every step feels harder, and the margin left over for everything else, including the physiological work of maintaining continence and bladder control, shrinks. The researchers hypothesized that this energetic squeeze might be visible in urinary symptoms, which previous work has repeatedly linked to mobility limitation, frailty, and functional decline.

To measure symptoms, the team used the 10-item LURN Symptom Index, a validated instrument that scores lower urinary tract symptoms over the past week on a scale from zero to thirty-eight, with higher scores indicating worse symptoms. They then fitted linear and logistic regression models relating VO2peak, ECw, and CCR to symptom scores and to the presence of urinary incontinence. Crucially, the models were adjusted for a demanding set of potential confounders: demographics, anthropometrics such as body size, smoking status, multimorbidity, and obstetric factors in women. The investigators also tested for interactions by sex, recognizing that the anatomy and physiology of the lower urinary tract differ substantially between men and women.

The results were nuanced but suggestive. In minimally adjusted models, both a higher energetic cost of walking and a higher cost-capacity ratio were associated with worse total scores on the LURN Symptom Index. For the cost-capacity ratio, each one standard deviation increase corresponded to a beta of 0.36 points on the symptom scale, with a ninety-five percent confidence interval of 0.05 to 0.67. When the models were fully adjusted for the complete set of confounders, however, the confidence intervals widened to include zero, meaning these overall associations could no longer be distinguished from chance. The authors are appropriately careful on this point: the evidence points toward a modest association rather than a dramatic one.

One finding did survive full statistical adjustment, and it is the most intriguing result in the paper. A higher energetic cost of walking was associated with significantly greater odds of urinary incontinence in men, with an odds ratio of 1.67 and a confidence interval of 1.10 to 2.54, but the same association was not observed in women. This sex-specific pattern raises questions the study was not designed to answer. In men, incontinence and other lower urinary tract symptoms often arise in the context of prostate enlargement and bladder outlet changes, and it is possible that a metabolically expensive gait pattern reflects underlying vascular or muscular deterioration that also compromises the systems supporting urinary control. In women, obstetric history and pelvic floor mechanics may dominate the symptom picture in ways that swamp any energetic signal.

Notably, VO2peak by itself was not associated with lower urinary tract symptoms in any of the adjusted models. This null result is informative. It suggests that raw aerobic capacity, the sheer size of the engine, matters less than the relationship between that capacity and the cost of using it. A person with a modest VO2peak who walks efficiently may fare as well symptomatically as someone with a larger engine and a costlier gait. This reframing matters for intervention design, because it implies that reducing the energetic cost of walking, through gait retraining, weight management, or improved muscle mitochondrial function, could be as meaningful as raising fitness itself.

The study builds on a growing body of SOMMA research connecting energetics to aging outcomes. Earlier work from the same cohort has shown that lower muscle mitochondrial energetics are associated with greater phenotypic frailty and with multimorbidity burden, and that walking energetics and perceived fatigability interact with gait speed. Prior epidemiological studies have also linked physical activity to urinary health, finding that higher activity levels are associated with lower risk of urinary incontinence in women and reduced lower urinary tract symptom risk in men, while obesity increases risk. The new analysis adds a mechanistic dimension to this literature by proposing a specific physiological pathway, the cost-capacity relationship, through which overall physical condition and urinary symptoms could be connected.

The authors are candid about the limitations. The data are cross-sectional, so the direction of the relationship cannot be established. It is entirely possible that severe urinary symptoms, particularly nocturia that fragments sleep or incontinence that discourages leaving home, lead to reduced physical activity, deconditioning, and a rising cost-capacity ratio rather than the reverse. The associations, where they existed, were modest, and the fully adjusted models attenuated several of them. Still, the paper’s central proposal is compelling: energetic capacity, the balance between what movement costs and what the body can supply, may represent a novel intervention target for the large population of older adults in whom lower urinary tract symptoms and mobility limitations occur together. If future longitudinal and experimental studies confirm the pathway, the humble treadmill walk test could become an unexpected window into urinary health in aging.

Subject of Research: Associations between walking energetics, cardiorespiratory fitness, and lower urinary tract symptoms in older adults

Article Title: Energetic pathway to lower urinary tract symptoms in older adults: associations with cardiorespiratory fitness and walking energetics in the study of muscle, mobility and aging

Article References: Anokwuru, F., Mansfield, T. A., Chen, B. H., Glynn, N. W., Mau, T., Kritchevsky, S. B., McVary, K., Gill, H. K., Barnes, H. N., Goodpaster, B. H., Cummings, S. R., Cawthon, P. M., & Bauer, S. R. (2026). Energetic pathway to lower urinary tract symptoms in older adults: associations with cardiorespiratory fitness and walking energetics in the study of muscle, mobility and aging. GeroScience. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-026-02524-0

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s11357-026-02524-0

Keywords: lower urinary tract symptoms, urinary incontinence, aging, cardiorespiratory fitness, VO2peak, walking energetics, cost-capacity ratio, GeroScience, SOMMA, geriatrics, mobility, energy metabolism

The clinical case for urgency is overwhelming. Urinary incontinence fulfills every criterion of a major geriatric syndrome: it is multifactorial, exceedingly common in older populations, particularly women, and it arises from the interplay of multiple diseases, medications and functional impairments rather than from a single organ defect. Longitudinal studies have revealed that the relationships between incontinence and disability, frailty and depressive mood are bidirectional. Incontinence increases the risk of developing these conditions, and these conditions in turn raise the likelihood that incontinence will emerge over time. This feedback loop helps explain why incontinence so often marks a turning point in the trajectory of ageing, accelerating decline rather than merely accompanying it.

The consequences extend well beyond discomfort. Recent prospective cohort studies of older women recovering from hip fracture have established a bidirectional association between urinary incontinence and mobility impairment, showing that incontinence predicts death and shapes changes in living arrangements and mobility among survivors. An independent association has also been reported between incontinence and sarcopenia, the age-related loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength. Although urinary incontinence increases the risk of death, the evidence suggests that this association is largely mediated by disability, underscoring that continence and physical function are deeply intertwined. Above all, incontinence devastates quality of life, frequently burdens family caregivers and raises the probability of admission to long-term care, a finding documented in studies of families caring for older people with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease.

Yet despite this indisputable standing as a geriatric syndrome, urinary incontinence remains chronically underdetected, underassessed and undertreated. The authors trace the silence to multiple sources. Older people themselves often avoid seeking help because of shame and stigma, or they dismiss incontinence as a natural and therefore untreatable part of ageing. Negative attitudes and ignorance of available treatment options compound the problem. Crucially, the editorial insists that older adults are not to blame, because health care professionals frequently share the same adverse attitudes and knowledge gaps. The authors frame the issue in ethical terms: geriatricians bear a professional obligation and moral responsibility to confront the persistent stigma and neglect surrounding urinary incontinence and its related symptoms.

How, then, can the silence be uncovered? The editorial lays out a practical three-step strategy. First, awareness of urinary incontinence and its treatment options must be raised among older adults, caregivers and health professionals alike through systematic education. Second, clinicians should actively prompt patients to report symptoms rather than waiting for spontaneous disclosure; a simple question such as whether the patient has any problems with bladder or bowel function is the minimum, and it is easily feasible in routine practice. Third, validated questionnaires should be deployed systematically to identify symptoms. The International Consultation on Incontinence Questionnaire Short Form, translated into many languages, helps distinguish between specific types of incontinence in both men and women and is recommended as a dedicated screening instrument.

The need for dedicated screening is supported by comparative evidence. Although incontinence is already included in validated activities-of-daily-living instruments such as the Katz and Barthel indices, a study conducted in an acute care for elders unit found that the continence item of the Katz scale was not sensitive enough to detect urinary incontinence in hospitalized older adults, whereas the ICIQ-UI proved effective in this vulnerable and clinically complex population. The message is clear: urinary incontinence deserves a screening tool of its own, which could substantially enhance early identification and management. Once symptoms are detected, the editorial recommends comprehensive geriatric assessment, the evidence-based cornerstone of geriatric syndrome care, leading to an individually tailored management plan in which frailty and cognition are evaluated and patients and caregivers participate in decision making.

Recognizing incontinence as an integral component of comprehensive geriatric assessment carries particular diagnostic weight because of its overlap with cognitive disorders. Urinary incontinence may be an early and recognizable symptom of specific conditions including small vessel disease, frontotemporal degeneration, normal pressure hydrocephalus and dementia with Lewy bodies, whereas in Alzheimer’s disease it typically emerges in later phases as functional ability becomes increasingly compromised. Incontinence also raises the risk of falls, and the World Guidelines for Falls Prevention and Management explicitly recommend that screening for urinary incontinence and nocturia be included in multifactorial falls risk assessment. For treatment, one of the few dedicated resources is the report on incontinence in frail elderly persons from the sixth International Consultation on Incontinence. Non-pharmacological management is the first step, preserving physical function to preserve continence, and a careful medication review is essential before any pharmacotherapy, since many drugs precipitate incontinence and other bladder dysfunction through various mechanisms. Invasive procedures demand individual evaluation, because frail patients face elevated risks of complications, and much can be done even for people living with advanced dementia to preserve dignity, maintain quality of life and relieve caregiver burden.

The silence, the authors observe, reaches into research itself. Parker-Autry and Kuchel previously highlighted the disparity between knowledge accumulated on geriatric incontinence and that on falls and dementia over two decades. The editorial’s own audit of abstracts submitted to the annual congresses of the European Geriatric Medicine Society over five years found roughly 30 abstracts on urinary incontinence, compared with nearly 200 on delirium and up to 500 on falls, with only a subtle increase in recent years. The authors argue that more evidence is indeed needed, but that this gap must not preclude proper assessment and care today. They also call for reframing and broadening the concept of urinary incontinence to encompass the full spectrum of associated dysfunctions: fecal and double incontinence, which may be even more devastating and more overlooked; the combined storage and voiding symptoms of older men with benign prostatic enlargement; pelvic floor dysfunction and prolapse in growing numbers of older women; nocturia, whether as part of overactive bladder syndrome or as a multifactorial syndrome in its own right; and the underactive detrusor muscle of advanced age, which raises the risk of urinary retention and overflow incontinence. Elevated post-void residual volumes are common in acutely hospitalized older patients, and catheterization protocols need unification to prevent complications such as catheter-associated urinary tract infections.

The editorial closes with a history and a challenge. The Special Interest Group on Urinary Incontinence began in 2016 as a Task and Finish Group and produced two consensus papers on detection, diagnosis and management, yet progress in the field has been relatively slow. The authors declare that a new era must now begin, one in which geriatricians ally with multidisciplinary teams and collaborate across specialties with urogynecologists and urosurgeons, supported by promising interdisciplinary initiatives across related special interest groups. For millions of older adults, the difference between silence and a single well-asked question may determine whether a treatable condition continues to erode their dignity, independence and survival.

Subject of Research: Urinary incontinence as an underrecognized geriatric syndrome in older adults requiring improved screening, management and research

Article Title: Urinary incontinence in older adults: call for action in geriatric care and research

Article References: Nuotio, M. S., & Panourgia, M. P. (2026). Urinary incontinence in older adults: call for action in geriatric care and research. European Geriatric Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41999-026-01607-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s41999-026-01607-7

Keywords: urinary incontinence, geriatric medicine, geriatric syndromes, older adults, frailty, comprehensive geriatric assessment, falls, dementia, nocturia, screening, caregiver burden, European Geriatric Medicine Society