Urinary and fecal incontinence in hospitalized patients: prevalence and associated factors

The study aimed to analyze the prevalence of urinary and fecal incontinence and sociodemographic and clinical variables associated with their occurrences in hospitalized patients. This is an cross-sectional, analytical and descriptive epidemiological study, where the study sample consisted of 345 adult and elderly patients hospitalized. The data were collected through interviews, physical examination and medical records. The prevalence of UI and FI has been obtained in a single day in four consecutive months (point-prevalence). This study adopted the current presence of UI and FI - current presence of involuntary losses of urine and involuntary losses of feces, respectively – for prevalence analysis. Data were analyzed using chi-square and Fisher tests for categorical variables, t-student and Mann-Whitney tests for numerical variables, and logistic regression for the identification of associated factors. P<0.05 was used for statistical significance, except for regression analysis variables insertion (p<0.1); 95% Confidence Interval was also analyzed. Results: the majority of the sample consisted of women (194 / 56.3%); the mean age of the participants was 48.9 years (SD = 21.2) with a median of 50 years. The following prevalence were obtained: 22.9% for UI (28% for women and 16.1% for men) and 7.9% for FI (9.4% for women and 6% for men). According to the logistic regression model the factors associated with UI were: female gender (OR=3.89; IC95% 1,899-7,991); age (OR=1.03; IC95% 1.019-1.054); asthma (OR=3.66; IC95% 1.302-10.290); being in use of laxatives (OR=3.26; IC95% 1.085-9.811); The diapers´ use at the time of evaluation (OR=2.75; IC95% 1.096-6.908); diapers´ use at home (OR=10.29; IC95% 1,839-57,606) and previous diapers´ use during hospitalization (OR=6.74; IC95% 0.496-91.834). It was not possible to apply the logistic regression model to test the independent variables associated with the presence of fecal incontinence due to its low prevalence in the studied sample.