Free app helps men control urine leakage – 05/02/2023 – Equilibrium and Health

An application developed by Luciana da Mata, associate professor at the School of Nursing at UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais), became an ally for patients who had their prostate removed after being diagnosed with cancer and started to suffer from urinary incontinence.

Research coordinator, Luciana, 37, has already worked with men in this profile since her master’s degree. There, she noticed that they had many pre-established doubts and concepts, some of which were unfounded —such as the loss of masculinity— about the disease and the surgical procedure. The fear of not being able to control urine and erectile dysfunction were some of these fears.

“One of the issues that make them apprehensive is the postoperative period. And of the many public services, there are few professionals engaged in the rehabilitation of urinary incontinence, which affects the majority of patients in this situation. Many live with it for a long time without getting treatment”, it says.

Luciana then created a booklet to help them, but a while later decided to expand this information through an application, developed over a year and which emerged from the partnership between members of the UFMG School of Nursing and the UFG Institute of Informatics (Goias Federal University).

This is how IUProst was born, a platform that is not restricted to UFMG patients and favors urinary incontinence as it is one of the consequences of surgery for most patients.

“After surgery, not much care is given other than post-surgery. There are side effects of the treatment. Incontinence can be reversible over time. Some men, on their own, will get their urine under control again, but many of them won’t. manage on their own”, says the teacher.

Due to the project, the team —composed of nurses, researchers in the area of ​​urinary incontinence and software developers from UFG— received international recognition in November when it won the SBEB Boston Scientific Innovation in Biomedical Engineering award for the SUS (Unified Health System).

“I couldn’t go to receive the award because my son was born on the exact same day. A student who participates in the project, Fabrícia, went to represent the group”, says Luciana, who is on maternity leave.

Since October last year, the tool can be obtained free of charge through the Play Store (for Android) by any man who receives this diagnosis, after undergoing consultations and medical examinations.

The app has already had over 2,000 downloads. Of these, 759 devices are using the platform and almost 7,000 exercises have already been performed.

IUProst has commands and videos that explain various behaviors such as drinking habits or how to use the bathroom correctly.

One of the differentials is the muscle training program. Luciana explains that it is like an exercise to strengthen the muscles so that the patient can control his sphincter and hold the urine.

“We work on reversing incontinence, but it depends a lot on the man adhering to the training proposal and doing the exercises at least three times a day, for eight weeks, which will provide autonomy”, says Luciana.

She explains that the exercises do not need to be done under the command of a professional and that the app issues alerts to remind you of the activities. “It’s self-care. The application makes it easy to teach and follow the exercises, which get more intense each week”, says the research coordinator.

If the patient has any questions related to the functioning of the application and the exercises, they can access the platform’s WhatsApp channel, Talk to the Professional.

“We don’t do online consultations, the application is not the focus. It is a tool allied to the treatment. It is important to maintain face-to-face professional monitoring”, says Luciana.

Master by the UFMG School of Nursing, Fabrícia Estevam, 29, the student who went to receive the award in Costa Rica, developed the application during her dissertation, defended in 2022.

She highlights the advantage of the patient being able to do the exercises at home, with expert monitoring via the app, without the need to always go to the outpatient clinic for this. “It’s a way for him to get to know better what he’s facing.”

To show how incontinence can affect men, Fabrícia remembers the reaction of one of the patients, who thought about separating from his wife because he was ashamed of not holding his urine when he sneezed or even when he got up.

“Men, in general, do not talk about the problem and hide their fears. It is a difficult population to accept help. But this patient underwent the treatment, which requires a lot of discipline, and managed to reverse urinary incontinence. He rescued his self-esteem and his life .”

The costs of the work were paid with part of the public notice for research on urinary incontinence that the professor obtained between 2018 and 2022, in the total amount of R$ 24,000, from CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development).

“It’s a challenge within the public service. [Para viabilizar o projeto] We did a crowdfunding too, because to put the application in the base, there are courses on operation, website payment and other things. It’s a lot of dedication from the whole group.”

According to Inca (National Cancer Institute), prostate cancer is the most common type among the male population, representing 29% of diagnoses of the disease in the country. There were 65,840 new cases each year, between 2020 and 2022. Men over 55 years old, overweight and obese, are more prone to the disease, according to Inca.