BACKGROUND: Urinary incontinence is a disease with high prevalence among the female population and it has important physical, mental and social repercussions. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the prevalence of characteristic urinary symptoms of urinary incontinence and the obstetric factors associated with them. METHODS: This was an analytical cross-sectional study in which 194 adult women employed at the Universidade do Vale do Paraíba were investigated. They answered questions from the King's Health Questionnaire. Urinary symptoms were linked to the obstetric history and analyzed by unpaired Student's t test and by Fisher's exact test. RESULTS: The prevalence of urinary symptoms was 54.3%. Stress urinary incontinence was the most frequent symptom (55.7%), followed by nocturia (27.8%), urgency (24.1%), pollakiuria (16.7%) and nocturnal enuresis (10.2%). The women who had been pregnant at least once were 1.75 times more likely to develop these symptoms than nulliparae, and the difference was significant in relation to two or more pregnancies (p=0.009). Two or more parturitions give rise to a risk that was 1.57 times greater, regardless of the childbirth method (p=0.019). CONCLUSIONS: The prevalence of urinary symptoms was high. They were associated with obstetric factors and became proportionally greater with increasing numbers of pregnancies and parturitions.
prevalence; urinary incontinence; adult; risk factors
