Abstract
The treatment goal for patients with faecal incontinence is to eliminate or decrease the number of involuntary passages of faeces. Numerous causes for the symptom of faecal incontinence are recognised suggesting successful treatment approaches will vary. Medical management is limited since few drugs have been shown to alter the symptoms or the observable abnormalities in patients with faecal incontinence. It seems unlikely that medical treatment can be effective for patients with irreversible muscle and nerve damage, which has been reported to be present in as high as 80% of the cases of faecal incontinence [1]. Rational treatment is limited further by the imprecise understanding of the complex process of voluntary defaecation and continence. Until proper studies provide sufficient information to direct drugs at specific and treatable abnormalities, medical management will consist of partial treatment of some of the factors involved in the continence mechanism or in designing a program of planned defaecation to avoid incontinent episodes.
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© 1987 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht
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Miner, P.B. (1987). Medical treatment. In: Gooszen, H.G., Ten Cate Hoedemaker, H.O., Weterman, I.T., Keighley, M.R.B. (eds) Disordered Defaecation. Developments In Surgery, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3335-4_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3335-4_14
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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