Amber-UI: A closed-loop bioelectronic system for urinary incontinence

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Urinary incontinence (UI) is a common condition that can severely impact physical, mental and financial wellbeing. Though it is thought at least 8.5% of the global population suffer from UI, many do not admit it, with fewer than half of adults with severe UI seeking help from healthcare providers; one study found that men would rather admit to sexual impotence than symptoms of incontinence.Amber-UI will be a highly innovative implantable bioelectronic neuroprosthesis intended to provide synthetic continence reflexes in patients with UI who have not responded to simple treatments like lifestyle changes, pelvic floor exercises, medication, bladder injections, etc.Where current options for these patients consist of high-risk, variably successful surgery or dated on-size-fits-all electrical stimulation therapies that mostly only reduce rather than cure symptoms, Amber-UI will bring intelligent adaptive stimulation. It will respond to the individual patient's physiology and measurable biomarkers of both 'urge' (the sudden need to urinate) and 'stress' events (coughing, sneezing, lifting, etc). In effect, Amber-UI will restore the normal mechanisms of continence in a large group of UI patients so that they remain dry all the time---transforming these patients' lives.Conducting experimental medicine in first-time-in-human studies, this project will refine Amber-UI's minimally-invasive surgical technique so that it requires a similar surgeon skill/time commitment as current electrical stimulation therapy surgeries, and it will explore and optimise Amber-UI sensing and stimulation to ultimately provide patients with synthetic reflex control of continence.