In the event that the nerves and the brain are no longer communicating effectively, resulting in a bowel/bladder disorder, this type of treatment is designed to imitate a signal sent via the central nervous system.
[citation needed] Many studies have been initiated using the sacral nerve stimulation (SNS) technique to treat patients that suffer with urinary problems.
[citation needed] When applying this procedure, proper patient screening is essential, because some disorders that affect the urinary tract (like bladder calculus or carcinoma in-situ) have to be treated differently.
This procedure has shown long term success rate that ranges from 50% to 90%, and one study concluded that it was a good option for patients with lower urinary tract dysfunction refractive to conservative and pharmacological interventions.
[1] Fecal incontinence, the involuntary loss of stool and flatus release afflicting mainly elderly people, can also be treated with sacral nerve stimulation as long as patients have intact sphincter muscles.
[2] Pascual et al. (2011) revised the follow-up results of the first 50 people that submit to sacral nerve stimulation (SNS) to treat fecal incontinence in Madri (Spain).
The most common cause for the fecal incontinence was obstetric procedures, idiopathic origin and prior anal surgery, and all these people were refractory to the conservative treatment.
Therefore, although the reason the SNS is effective is unknown, this procedure had satisfactory results in these clinical cases with a low incidence of complications, and the study concluded that it was a good option for treatment of anal incontinence.
[3] Limited evidence from a Cochrane review of randomised controlled trials suggests that sacral nerve stimulation may help to reduce fecal incontinence.
[6] There are currently no studies into the efficacy of this on an overactive bladder and other associated symptoms of urinary incontinence, however, in a report carried out by GUT (an international peer-reviewed journal for health professionals and researchers in gastroenterology and hepatology) it was found that 20% of the group tested achieved complete continence.