Advantages of Clean Intermittent Catheterisation (CIC)
If you have enough motor control to handle a catheter, self-catheterisation is a safe and convenient way to empty your bladder regardless of your condition. The goal with catheterisation is to improve your quality of life by giving you better control of your bladder. While at the same time preventing kidney damage and complications such as residual urine and urinary tract infections (UTI’s).
Clean Intermittent Catheterisation offers many advantages:
- It’s easy and safe, and while it may feel a little weird at first, it does not hurt
- It empties the bladder completely, preventing the backflow of urine that could damage kidneys
- It prevents residual urine, reducing the risk of urinary tract infections
- Because it empties completely, there’s no risk of urine leakage
- You control when and how to empty your bladder
- It could help you get a full night’s sleep
- You get used to it quite easily so it becomes more like regular urination
- Improved quality of life! You don’t have to worry about embarrassing leaks, or how you’ll manage outside the home.
Clean Intermittent Catheterisation puts you in control
Bladder problems, regardless of their severity, can make it hard to go about our normal day-to-day lives with confidence. Catheterising can help in a lot of different ways.
Using intermittent catheters means you’ll be able to empty your bladder at different periods throughout the day—just like natural peeing. That means you’ll be following a normal routine, which is more important than it may sound. With a good single-use catheter, you’ll be able to catheterise quickly and comfortably and with a minimum of fuss. No one has to know besides you.
By catheterising, you’ll also empty the bladder completely, so there’s little risk of leakage. A lot of people with bladder problems worry about going out in case there are leaks that get smelly. Self-catheterising can be part of the solution. Needless to say, complete emptying is also better for you from a medical perspective.
Insufficient emptying of the bladder in the evening is a common reason for sleeping problems. Once you start to catheterise, you will be able to empty the bladder completely each night before bedtime and hence you will not wake up because of urgency.
Another important way single-use catheters can impact your life is sex. Just the fact that you’re relieving the urine problem increases the chances for better sex function. And you’ll be in a better mood for it too. Disposable catheters also mean there is no permanent device to be embarrassed about or that gets in the way.