Bladder Scanners in Personal Care Homes

Key Messages

• For older adults with incontinence in a personal care home setting, using a bladder scanner to assist traditional urinary incontinence care may reduce the amount of daytime urine loss and use of incontinence pads without increasing caregivers’ care burden.
• Adding a bladder scanner to urinary incontinence care may not impact patient quality of life, mental state, depression, physical function, and level of motivation.
• These findings were based on 2 studies, 1 of which lacked a control group and did not directly measure the effect of adding a bladder scanner to urinary incontinence care on patients’ urine loss. This may limit our confidence in the findings.
• We did not find any studies that reported on the effect of using bladder scanners in the personal care setting on rates of catheterization, emergency department visits, urinary tract infections, or other harms. We also did not identify any cost-effectiveness studies or evidence-based guidelines that met inclusion criteria for this report.