Guidance
This guideline covers assessing and treating bedwetting in people aged under 19. It aims to reduce bedwetting and the distress this causes by explaining what to ask in an assessment, what advice to provide, and which treatments are effective.
Recommendations
This guideline includes recommendations on:
- assessment and investigation
- advice on fluid intake, diet and toileting patterns
- initial treatment with alarms and desmopressin
- recurrence of bedwetting
- anticholinergics and tricyclics
- children under 5 years with bedwetting
Who is it for?
- Healthcare professionals
- Commissioners and providers
- People aged under 19 with bedwetting, and their families and carers
Is this guideline up to date?
We checked this guideline in November 2018. We found no new evidence that affects the recommendations in this guideline.
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
This guideline was previously called nocturnal enuresis: the management of bedwetting in children and young people.
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals and practitioners are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or the people using their service. It is not mandatory to apply the recommendations, and the guideline does not override the responsibility to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual, in consultation with them and their families and carers or guardian.
All problems (adverse events) related to a medicine or medical device used for treatment or in a procedure should be reported to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency using the Yellow Card Scheme.
Local commissioners and providers of healthcare have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual professionals and people using services wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with complying with those duties.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.