Bladder

The bladder is a hollow, muscular, balloon shaped organ that lies in your pelvis. It collects urine from your kidneys and stores it until it is full enough to empty through the urethra.

Urine drains from the kidneys into the bladder through the urethra. From the bladder, urine is excreted through a tube called the urethra. In women, this tube is about 1.5 inches long and exits the body at the upper aspect of the vaginal opening. In men the urethra is about 8 inches long and passes through the penis, opening at its tip.

Bladder Anatomy

The bladder has flexible muscular walls three layers thick. As urine fills the bladder, these walls expand; they contract to expel urine. Although the bladder can hold about a pint of urine, the urge to urinate usually starts when it is about half full.

The wall of the bladder wall has three principal tissue layers or coats:

• Mucosa,
• Sub mucosa, and
• Muscularis

The male and female urethras are significantly different. The main differences being that in the female the urethra is shorter and has a low external sphincter pressure.

In males the bladder neck has a greater sphincter function, the prostate gland also has some contribution and there is a higher external sphincter pressure. In the male there is a longer urethra.

Conditions that affect the Bladder

Some of the common factors that affect the bladder include:

• Bed wetting - Normally affect young children but most get through it,
• Bladder cancer – Normally of two types: invasive bladder cancer and papillary bladder cancer,
• Cystocele - Occurs when the bladder bulges into the vagina,
• Urinary incontinence - This is loss of bladder control and
• Urinary retention - Bladder emptying problems

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