I apologize if my post will be perceived as offensive, but I just don't agree with some of the statements made in this thread...
1. Even though I agree that medication, Botox and interstim can have no effect, or the effect might wear off and that there might be side effects, there are plenty of incontinent people who have a better life thanks to these treatments. However it's important to consult the doctors and to stop if the treatment shows no improvement or is - even worse - contraproductive.
2. I'm not a doctor and also don't know the medical situation of the incontinent people who post here. Therefore I would never recommend anyone to quit on the hope to solve incontinence or even to do reverse potty training. Being incontinent is a symptom and an indication that something is wrong with the body, thus medical investigations which exclude certain diseases (e.g. diabetes, polyneuropthy, bladder cancer,...) are very important.
3.
This is just plain wrong. "Half will see an 80% improvement" does not mean that
- exactly half of the treated patients will have 80% improvement (I know of people who have completely regained continence thanks to interstim)
- the remaining group of treated patients see 0% improvement. I have experience with the "percutane tibial nerve stimulation treatment", and even though it does not improve my urinary incontinence it reduces my bowel incontinence which is very satisfactory. So the percentage of improvement is not 80% but still significant enough to have a better life.
And even if the failure rate were 60%...if I had a 40% chance to improve my incontinence by 80%, I'd try to take it (unfortunately I know that interstim won't work for my bladder incontinence). Finally it's very difficult to draw a conclusion on the success probability of an individual treatment based on the statistics made with OAB affected patients. OAB is a symptom with a large number of often unknown reasons behind it, so that the significance of the statistical results is quite limited.