You’re afraid to laugh with your friends for fear of urine leaking out. And God forbid you should sneeze! These situations are very common among women dealing with stress incontinence due to pelvic floor dysfunction.
About 40% of women around the world experience pelvic organ prolapse due to a weakened pelvic floor, and bladder prolapse is the most common. When your bladder shifts out of position, incontinence is often the result.
If you’ve exhausted more conservative solutions for your stress incontinence, such as pelvic floor exercises and training, and you have nothing to show for your efforts, you’re not out of options.
Here at Advanced Endometriosis Center, Dr. Ulas Bozdogan and our team offer an innovative solution for incontinence that blends human experience with robotic precision — a da Vinci® robotic-assisted sacrocolpopexy. Let’s take a look at how this minimally invasive repair of your pelvic floor can help you regain your confidence.
You may already know a little bit about pelvic organ prolapse, but we want to quickly review what you're up against.
Your pelvic floor is a group of muscles and soft tissues that form a supportive hammock under your pelvic organs to keep them in position. These tissues can weaken over time, especially if you’ve had children, you’re carrying extra pounds, and/or you’ve passed through menopause.
When your pelvic floor weakens, your organs can shift downward, which is what is happening with your bladder. As a result, there’s more stress on your bladder as it pushes into your vagina, which can lead to urinary incontinence.
Pelvic floor exercises like Kegels are a great way to strengthen your pelvic floor, but if they don’t work and your bladder keeps migrating downward, it may be time for surgical repair.
When Dr. Bozdogan repairs your pelvic floor, he uses a mesh to reinforce the tissues so they’re better able to support your pelvic organs.
This surgery used to be more invasive, but thanks to the da Vinci technology, we’re able to take a path of less resistance.
If you’re thinking there’s a robot in the surgery room, that’s not quite what’s happening. With the da Vinci system, Dr. Bozdogan makes very small incisions in your lower abdomen, through which he can thread small tools and a camera.
These surgical tools are controlled with da Vinci’s robotic arms, which Dr. Bozdogan guides from a console. He has an excellent field of sight with the high-definition camera that transmits images to a screen.
The benefit of robotic arms is that, unlike human hands, they can work in smaller spaces with more accuracy and precision. As a result, there's less collateral tissue damage, which makes your recovery far shorter and more comfortable.
The robotic-assisted pelvic floor repair takes a few hours, and you’ll be under general anesthesia the whole time.
As we mentioned, your recovery will be smoother thanks to our minimally invasive robotic approach. As for long-term results, one study found that more than 87% of women were satisfied with a mesh repair of their pelvic floor 17 years after the procedure. And by satisfied, we mean their urinary incontinence was largely resolved.
If you'd like to explore whether a da Vinci robotic-assisted pelvic floor repair is a good solution for your urinary incontinence, we invite you to schedule a consultation with Dr. Bozdogan today online or over the phone. We have offices in New York City and Paramus, New Jersey.
