Many women have issues around incontinence, which involves the leaking or emptying of urine from the bladder, especially as we age. Multi-channel urodynamic testing is one way to evaluate urinary incontinence. It also is performed to evaluate bladder function before pelvic organ prolapse surgery.

We must perform this test before any kind of surgery is done on the bladder. Please let us know if you have had this done previously so we can obtain those results for review. This testing gives us a detailed evaluation of the function of the bladder and helps to identify problems with storing and emptying urine.

On the day of this test, you should come to the office with a full bladder. A trained technician will insert a small catheter into the bladder with a second catheter placed in the vagina. The bladder will be filled with sterile water and you will be asked to cough and “bear down,” and leakage will be recorded. You will be asked to identify different sensations with bladder filling. We will be able to identify spontaneous bladder contractions which are present in women with an overactive bladder.

The entire test takes approximately 20 minutes and is virtually painless to most patients.

Other tests of the bladder include cystoscopy, which is when a cystoscope is inserted through the urethra to visualize the bladder, which can help diagnose and even treat disorders involving the bladder and urethra.