Round 2:

AHCPR GUIDELINES on URINARY INCONTINENCE

On March 5, 1996, The Agency for Health Care Policy and Research issued the long-awaited second edition of their Guideline on Urinary incontinence in adults. They've promised that the entire document will be available on-line, but so far (March 9) only summary brochures have actually been posted. Before you click (below) on the Agency's new website, however, you need to know that some young hot-shot has "webified" even the one posted brochure into dozens of cutsey little web pages! You can only download a couple of paragraphs at a time! Talk about stupid! Let's hope that the full text of the full report is eventually on line in a downloadable manner! In the meantime...

1. For the official announcement of the new Guidelines, see their March 5th Press Release.
2. For a concise summary, see the Overview on Clinical Practice Guideline Update. This will put the next item into proper perspective.
3. The 9 separate pages that make up the section on Treatment Recommendations: Pelvic Muscle Rehabilitation have been collected and edited into a single "page". (See the Overview above to understand their place in the whole document.)
4. The Agency has also just published a collection of "Real World Examples of Use" of the original 1992 Guidelines; mentioned prominently is our mutual friend, Michael I. Williams of Bradenton, Florida, whose Advantage Medical Services - with several clinics in central Florida - collectively treats more patients with biofeedback than any other organization in the world.
5. The AHCPR now maintains a "home page" at http://www.ahcpr.gov, but it's mostly just a cute webby interface; requests for substantive documents are quickly bounced to the original source, http://text.nlm.nih.gov, the National Library of Medicine's major site.

As soon as we can get the full and official text, we hope to provide a critical review of the new Guideline; be sure and check back in a few days, on this very page.