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FRIDAY, April 16 (HealthDayNews) -- An experimental nerve stimulation treatment is showing some promise as a treatment for fecal incontinence.

A study in this week's issue of The Lancet found electrical stimulation of the sacral nerve in the spine improved continence as well as several indicators of quality of life in a small sample of patients.

According to the study authors, fecal incontinence -- when a person can't control their bowels -- affects about 2 percent of the overall population. The problem becomes more common as people age, with some 11 percent of men and 26 percent of women over the age of 50 affected.

Many people with fecal incontinence can be treated with surgery to repair the anal sphincter (the muscle at the opening of the anus), as well as with medications, diet modifications or pelvic-floor exercises. But these do not always work and, for the remaining patients, there are even fewer options.

"Unfortunately for people with fecal incontinence, there aren't that many options," said Dr. Brooke Gurland, co-director of the Maimonides Center for Pelvic Floor Dysfunction and Reconstructive Surgery in New York City. "The possibility that we have anything else as part of our armamentarium in the correct patients, I think, is very exciting."

Sacral nerve stimulation is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of urinary incontinence. When the urinary incontinence trials were ongoing, researchers got a hint the technique might also work for fecal incontinence.

"When they started to do the trial in urinary incontinence, they noticed as an aside that fecal incontinence was better," Gurland said. "This is something that we've been watching for a number of years and it is exciting."

For the current study, investigators at the University of Nuremburg in Germany implanted electrodes to stimulate the sacral nerve in 34 patients. Participants kept diaries of incontinent episodes and were followed for three years.

Weekly episodes of fecal incontinence were reduced from about 16 at the outset of the study to about three after one year of treatment, and to about two after two years. The mean number of days per week with incontinent episodes declined from 4.5 at the beginning of the trial to 1.4 at one year and 1.2 at 24 months.

Eighty-three percent of participants had a 50 percent or greater improvement in the total number of incontinent episodes per week, while at least 71 percent had a 50 percent or greater improvement in total number of days per week with incontinent episodes.

Twelve patients (37 percent) resolved their incontinence entirely.

Participants also showed significant and immediate improvements in quality of life measures, including lifestyle, coping and behavior, depression and self-perception and embarrassment.

Some side effects were noted but, according to the authors, these were not overly troubling. The most serious complication was infection from the implantation procedure. Nine people developed such an infection. While all were treated with antibiotics, four had to have the electrical leads removed. Some participants also complained of pain.

It's still not entirely clear why this method works as well as it does. It could be the effect of the stimulation on sphincter function but also on various related anatomic structures, the authors pointed out.

More information

For more on fecal incontinence, visit the National Institutes of Health or aboutincontinence.org.

(SOURCES: Brooke Gurland, M.D., co-director, Maimonides Center for Pelvic Floor Dysfunction and Reconstructive Surgery, New York City; April 17, 2004, The Lancet)

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