Ageing Matters: Addressing the challenges of urinary symptom management

Despite two-thirds of adults suffering from urinary symptoms, there are significant challenges to achieving symptom management. Urinary symptoms are still taboo for many and are often incorrectly considered part of healthy ageing. Together this means that patients often do not seek help. Professor Young will describe education projects for the public and for healthcare practitioners, intended to improve awareness about urinary symptoms and the availability of healthcare and support services, towards achieving timely and effective intervention. In parallel, a challenge for the practitioner is the accurate diagnosis of the basis of a patient's symptoms, given overlap of urinary symptoms associated with different pathologies. Professor Young describes his research to identify urinary biomarkers for a prevalent, impactful condition called overactive bladder. His group's discovery of a urinary biomarker 'fingerprint' of overactive bladder is currently being developed into a simple test for the point-of-care setting, in order to provide healthcare practitioners with a simple tool to aid accurate diagnosis and help achieve effective symptom management.