Influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on self-reported urinary incontinence during pregnancy and postpartum: A prospective study

Abstract

Objective: To explore how the COVID-19 pandemic influenced self-reported occurrence and severity of pregnancy-related urinary incontinence (UI) in the maternity pathways of Tuscany, Italy.

Methods: In this prospective pre-post cohort study, we selected a pre-pandemic (n = 1018) and a post-pandemic (n = 3911) cohorts of women that completed, from the first trimester until 3 months postpartum, three surveys including validated patient-reported outcome measures for UI. Data were obtained from systematic surveys on the maternity pathways of Tuscany from March 2019 to June 2021. We performed panel regression models to explore how UI risk differed between COVID-19 groups.

Results: UI occurred less frequently and less severely in post-pandemic patients-especially stress/mixed UI in women never performing pelvic floor muscle training (PFMT)-whereas no difference emerged in women performing during-pregnancy PFMT. During COVID-19, obese women had higher risk of UI, whereas women undergoing operative delivery had lower risk. The post-pandemic group reported more severe UI symptoms at the third trimester, but less severe UI postpartum in women suffering from UI during pregnancy.

Conclusions: During the COVID-19 pandemic, women reported fewer UI symptoms because they might have lacked chances to identify UI symptoms as a result of pandemic-related sedentarism and inactivity. The risk in women performing during-pregnancy PFMT was not increased, but just six of 26 health districts organized remote PFMT sessions, thus revealing limited resilience to the pandemic in Tuscany.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic; Italy; patient-reported outcome; postpartum; pregnancy; urinary incontinence.