Treatment of urinary incontinence by implantable prosthetic sphincter.

Abstract A completely implantable prosthetic urethral sphincter was implanted in five patients with urinary incontinence. The preliminary results indicate that this prosthesis successfully restored continence to all five patients. These patients included a forty five-year-old woman who had persistent stress incontinence in spite of standard operative procedures, a thirty-six-year-old woman with neurologic bladder secondary to meningomyelocele, a thirteen-year-old girl with traumatic seventh-vertebra paraplegia and neurologic bladder, an eighteen-year-old man whose neurologic defect from myelomeningocele caused total urinary incontinence, and a twenty-four-year-old woman with cauda equina injury resulting in neurologic bladder dysfunction.