Guidance
This guideline covers assessing and managing urinary incontinence in children, young people and adults with neurological disease. It aims to improve care by recommending specific treatments based on what symptoms and neurological conditions people have.
Last reviewed: 19 December 2024
We added links to relevant technology appraisal guidance in the section on pharmacological treatments. This is to provide easy access to relevant guidance at the right point in the guideline only and is not a change in practice.
Next review: This guideline will be reviewed if there is new evidence that is likely to change the recommendations
Recommendations
This guideline includes recommendations on:
- assessment
- information and support
- treatment to improve bladder storage and emptying, and for stress incontinence
- management with catheter valves and ileal conduit diversion
- monitoring and surveillance protocols
- potential complications
Who is it for?
- Healthcare professionals
- Commissioners and providers
- People with urinary incontinence and neurological disease and their families and carers
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
This guideline was previously called neurological disease: management of lower urinary tract dysfunction in neurological disease.
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.