Risk Factors for Postpartum Stress Urinary Incontinence: a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Stress urinary incontinence (SUI) is a distressing symptom affecting females globally and is one of the most common complications of delivery. The etiology of female SUI is multifactorial, and the trauma caused by delivery is one of the most important risk factors for SUI. We performed a meta-analysis to determine the relationship between these various factors and postpartum SUI. We searched PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library until January 2019 using appropriate keywords and extracted 46 eligible studies that included 73,010 participants. The study protocol was registered with PROSPERO (No. CRD42020150094). The pooled results indicated that 12 risk factors, including vaginal delivery (OR 2.08, 95% CI 1.72–2.52), advanced age at gestation (OR 1.06, 95% CI 1.04–1.08), advanced maternal BMI (OR 1.04, 95% CI 1.03–1.06), excess weight gain during pregnancy (OR 1.13, 95% CI 1.00–1.26), advanced current BMI (OR 1.32, 95% CI 1.02–1.70), diabetes (OR 1.91, 95% CI 1.53–2.38), episiotomy (OR 1.76, 95% CI 1.06–2.94), forceps delivery (OR 2.69, 95% CI 1.25–5.76), gestational UI (OR 5.04, 95% CI 2.07–12.28), gestational SUI (OR 4.28, 95% CI 2.61–7.01), prenatal UI (OR 8.54, 95% CI 3.52–20.70), and early postpartum UI (OR 3.52, 95% CI 1.61–7.69), were associated with postpartum SUI. The findings of this analysis could serve to generate risk prediction models and provide a basis for developing treatment strategies for patients with postpartum SUI.