Fecal Incontinence

Why the need for yet another book dealing with fecal incontinence? The question that each of us should ask ourselves before facing a clinical problem is “What’s I need to know”? This project was conceived because of need for practicality, the necessity of a concrete advice when we have to deal out with patients and to give them plausible answers. We specialists, surgeons, gastroenterologists and all the others, often hear about wonderful experiences showed during congresses, master-class or brilliant published results obtained by the Authors with various type of therapies. Very frequently we hear or read the 90-100% of good results especially in some surgical techniques. The real context is quite different. For what concerns fecal incontinence, if we arrive to a 40-50% of good results maintained for long follow-up (at least over 60 months) we are heroes. So, there is probably a large gap between the challenge functional problems and the concrete ways available to solve it. In public Health specialists should organize themselves in multidisciplinary hospital teams because of the costs of the device dedicated (e.g. rehabilitation equipment, device for sacral nerve stimulation). They should activate the hospital administrations to solve the problems of costs. Surely moving this type of treatment into private health care will not be a solution. The tools available to solve fecal incontinence, unless are not so numerous, might improve the symptoms of various patients if they are used consciously and with a specialised behavioural algorithm. As Editor of this book with Dr. Losacco, I thank the Authors participating in the drafting of the work started a few years ago and not facilitated by the Covid pandemic.