Sitting to Urinate Eases Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms (LUTS)

the Renal and Urology News take:

Sitting to urinate is associated with an improved urodynamic profile in men with lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) and other prostate problems, a recent study published in PLOS ONE has found.

Ype de Jong, MD, PhD, and fellow urologists at the Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands conducted a meta-analysis to better understand the effects of voiding posture on urodynamic parameters such as being able to urinate faster and with greater force, and leaving behind less urine in their bladders.

They looked at a total of 11 studies gathered from 2,352 publications across 14 medical databases, looking for studies that compared urodynamic parameters in standing against those that included sitting.

“We found that in patients with LUTS, the sitting position is associated with a trend towards a more favorable urodynamic profile,” the authors wrote. “When men with LUTS sat down to urinate, they did so faster, longer, at a greater pressure, and released more urine than men with LUTS who stood.”

The authors stated that a possible reason for this is that when patients are sitting, pelvic and hip muscles were more relaxed, and contraction of the pelvic floor musculature inhibits urinary muscle activity.