Page 83 - Urological Health

There is no definitive test to confirm that you have IC. Your diagnosis will be based on suspicion and
exclusion. A diagnosis of exclusion means that all other possible conditions, with similar symptoms,
will be ruled out before your IC diagnosis can be confirmed. You may have your symptoms for 3 to 5
years before a correct diagnosis is made.

Who gets IC?

• Most people with IC are women
• You can have IC at any age (although it’s rare in children and your chance of developing it drops off
after your mid-50s
• Estimates of how many people have IC vary from: 1.8 to 3.5 per 10,000 adult women to as high as
2.8% of Canadian women (which means there may be as many as 420,000 women with the disease
in Canada)

What does NOT affect your chance of having IC?
• Numbers of sexual partners • Marital status
• Race • Education
UNDER REVIEW
• Ethnicity • Household size

How do you get IC?
We still don’t know what causes IC but we are still working on finding out. There is a weak link between
IC and other diseases, including chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia.

How is IC diagnosed?

We diagnose IC by noting your symptoms and ruling out other diseases.

Symptoms of IC

• Pain • Urgency
• Frequent urinating day and night • Pain during sex

What are the symptoms?
1. Pain
The most common symptom is bladder pain; this doesn’t mean burning when you urinate, but true
bladder pain. You may feel it as pressure, but it’s still pain. The pain, often in the lower abdomen or
pelvis, may be constant, may occur when you drink, at the end of voiding or anywhere in between.
If there no pain at all, then it’s unlikley that you have IC.

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