Dr. Derek Griffiths, PhD
Vice-President

Derek Griffiths is a PhD physicist who became interested in bladder function nearly 40 years ago. Working in England, he pioneered the development of the theoretical foundations of urodynamics (the study of bladder and urethral function) and in 1971 became a founder member of the International Continence Society, now the foremost international body in this field. In 1977 he moved with his family to Holland, where he continued experimental and clinical research on bladder function, especially among children. In 1988 he moved to the University of Alberta to carry out a clinical research program into the causes and treatment of incontinence in old people. In 1992 he bhelped lead the establishment, as part of the regional geriatric program, of the Northern Alberta Continence Service, a self-referral community outreach program offering advice and assessment of incontinence to patients and health professionals. Since then they have developed a teaching program that includes accredited education and training in incontinence management for nurses and pharmacists.

In 2000, he became Professor of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, where he started a new research program with Dr Neil Resnick, a geriatrician renowned for incontinence research. The main focus of this work is the understanding and treatment of urge incontinence in older people. Currently he is investigating the brain control of the bladder, and what goes wrong in urge incontinence, by performing magnetic resonance imaging of the brain to reveal its activity during bladder filling. This research has opened up a new field of urodynamics, which he will review in a state-of-the-art lecture at this year’s meeting of the International Continence Society.

He has received a Royal Society European Fellowship and a lifetime achievement award from the Urodynamics Society. He has served on the standardization committee of the International Continence Society and is currently chair-elect. He is well known for his teaching in urodynamics as well as incontinence management, and gives frequent training courses (organized by a urodynamics equipment firm) throughout North America, in Australia and in Asia. During his career he has carried out many thousands of urodynamic studies among patients of all ages from pediatric to geriatric. At a multispecialty conference on urinary incontinence in 2001 he was described as "an historic figure in the evolution of urodynamics and the finest practicing urodynamicist in the world today." While these superlatives are somewhat exaggerated, it is true that he has been involved with urodynamics in many different roles since its beginnings, and has strong views on how it should be performed, interpreted, and used to guide patient care, based on both theoretical insight and very extensive experience.

He was also the project coordinator for TCCF in developing Canada's First Clinical Practice Guidelines For The Treatment of Urinary Incontinence