Continence product advice
Continence product advice for users, carers and healthcare professionals

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Urology news feature: catheters and incontinence after radical prostatectomy: preparing (but not scaring) men

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About us

What is the Continence Product Advisor?

Created and maintained by a multidisciplinary team, the Continence Product Advisor or ‘CPA’ provides web-based information on using products to manage incontinence and toileting. It is a collaboration between:

International Consultation on Incontinence (ICI), International Continence Society (ICS), University of Southampton and University College London.

Mission statement

The mission of the CPA is to provide people everywhere who live with bladder and bowel leakage, toileting problems and/or urine retention (and any healthcare professional or informal carers they may have) with evidence-based, independent information on selecting, accessing and using products to improve their quality of life.

Specifically, it provides help with:

• Identifying and selecting (combinations of) products to suit needs, lifestyles and preferences
• Getting the best out of products – including ‘how to…’ videos, leaflets and tips from users
• Identifying companies supplying products of interest, by country / region

The CPA covers all key product types and is:

• Research-based – where evidence is available
• Not-for-profit
• Without industry sponsorship
• Written by product user and continence healthcare experts

The content and underpinning research evidence, is based on:

Management using continence products (Chapter 19 in Incontinence 7th Edition (2023) Editors: Linda Cardozo, Eric Rovner, Adrian Wagg, Alan Wein and Paul Abrams ISBN: 978-0-9569607-4-0)

Chapter committee Chairs: Catherine Murphy (UK) & Mandy Fader (UK)
Authors: Donna Bliss (USA), Brian Buckley (Philippines), Rowan Cockerell (Australia), Alan Cottenden (UK), Jan Kottner (Germany), Joan Ostaszkiewicz (Australia)

The CPA website is hosted and maintained by the International Continence Society, the foremost international multi-disciplinary organisation for incontinence education and research.

Who are we?

A multi-disciplinary team of expert clinicians and product users, communications and web development personnel

Editorial team:

• Mandy Fader, Emeritus Professor of Continence Technology, University of Southampton
• Alan Cottenden, Emeritus Professor of Incontinence Technology, University College London
• Brian Buckley, Independent Health Services Researcher and Patient Representative
• Margaret Macaulay, Senior Research Fellow, University of Southampton
• Catherine Murphy, Professorial Fellow, Research, University of Southampton
• Jacqueline Emkes, Independent Patient Representative
• Chris Chatterton, Independent Patient Representative
• Carole Dorling, Senior Administrator, University of Southampton

Technical team:

• Dominic Turner, Chief Executive and Chief Technology Officer, International Continence Society
• Roger Blackmore, User Experience / Graphic Designer, International Continence Society

Contact us

We regularly receive queries from visitors to the site from around the world and these are answered in the following way:

1. Technical website queries are dealt with by the ICS technical team.
2. Other queries including from product users, healthcare professionals and industry are responded to by the editorial team.
3. General product-related advice is provided and/or there is signposting to other, specific information sources.
4. We do not provide specific clinical advice but may signpost to relevant sources of clinical help.
5. We do not send products (including samples) or provide price information but do signpost to industry websites from where these can be obtained.

Complete our short survey

We welcome constructive feedback from all our visitors so please tell us what you think. Your feedback provides vital support for our applications for further funding for the website so please do complete the survey.

Contribute your expert ‘user’ tips

These provide an opportunity for product users to share their experiences with others and are a much-valued part of the Continence Product Advisor. User tips can be submitted on individual product pages by clicking on 'Add your tip' or by contacting us. These are dealt with in the following way:

1. Reviewed by one or more of the editorial team.
2. Tips which are considered by the editorial team to include content which might be considered offensive are deleted.
3. The wording of tips may be adjusted by members of the editorial team to improve clarity, usefulness or address any potential safety issues.

Suppliers

Generally, every effort is made to provide information generically; that is, without reference to specific product brands. However, if there is only one brand available within a product type we may refer to it by name. Also, it may sometimes be possible to identify a specific brand of product from a picture or description, particularly where there are few brands within a product type or if a product has a very distinctive design. It is not our deliberate intention to enable identification of brands or provide a marketing platform. The Continence Product Advisor intends to provide impartial information about product groups and characteristics of products within those groups; it does not recommend one brand of product over another. Please contact us to be added to our supplier database or to tell us about any changes to your product range.

Inclusivity

The Continence Product Advisor team recognises and respects diversity. We recognise the importance of inclusive language in acknowledging this diversity, and insofar as possible inclusive language and terms are used on the website.

In many places we use assigned-sex-based definitions of “male” and “female” or “men” and “women” – for example, in the products sections and the Product Advisor feature. This is because the design of many continence products is based upon anatomy. Whether a product is suitable and effective therefore may depend upon a person’s anatomy, regardless of gender identity.

Photographs and Images

The website contains photographic images of a range of products within each of the main product groups. We only include product photos taken by our team and where the editorial team considers there are specific features which it would be of benefit to visitors to have highlighted in a picture. It is not the intention to include images of all available products.

The website also contains videos made with the consent of the individuals for the purposes of highlighting aspects of product use and product user experiences which we think would be helpful to others.

Editorial policy

The content of the website is periodically reviewed by the editorial team. The website is an ongoing project and some areas have yet to be completed and others started – we appreciate your patience while we develop these.

Legal notices

All text copyright of ICI, all software, databases and code is copyright and the intellectual property of ICS, medical Photography copyright University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust reproduced with permission. Other images reproduced courtesy of Shutterstock and iStockphoto. Site scaffolding courtesy of the Twitter Bootstrap CSS framework. Typography - Arvo by Anton Koovit, Font Awesome by Dave Gandy.

We want your feedback!

Please share comments on the website and help make it more useful for you and others.

Please note we are unable to respond to individual requests for advice about bladder or bowel symptoms; we strongly recommend that you contact your local health care professional or consumer organisation. Click on Worldwide to find help where you are.