Prevalence and associated factors of day wetting and combined day and night wetting

Background: This study was conducted to determine the prevalence of diurnal enuresis ( DE) and its association with background variables among children aged 5-15 years living in Sivas and Kahramanmaras, Turkey. Methods: The parents of 1,760 children voluntarily completed a questionnaire consisting of 42 items under supervision of a researcher. Results: Overall, the reported prevalence of DE was 4.2%, with a tendency to decrease with increasing age and with no difference between genders. Smoking during pregnancy, delayed initiation and dealing with the child by punishment in toilet training, urination frequency, urgency, soiling, arousal difficulty, urinary infection history, lower school performance, poor social adaptation, wetting history in the family, were all significantly prevalent among diurnal enuretics (p < 0.05). Socioeconomic or sociodemographic factors based on families and stressful life events were not associated with DE (p > 0.05). 63.9% of all parents reported some level of concern about the wetting problem and 51.7% of the diurnal enuretics had previously visited a physician. Conclusions: The prevalence of DE in our sample is not too different from the prevalence rates reported previously from Turkey and other countries. This type of enuresis seems to be more associated with an organic neurological or urological disorder than is nocturnal enuresis. Copyright (c) 2008 S. Karger AG, Basel.