Dribble after I have finished and zipped up, damp patch on my trousers. Is that the same as leaking, and are the exercises different?

Bloke, 54, no surgery, no prostate diagnosis, nothing dramatic. For about two years I have had the thing where I finish, shake, zip up, walk away from the urinal, and a minute later there is a small damp patch. Not a lot. Enough that I now buy dark trousers only and keep my jacket on in meetings.

Finally mentioned it to my GP in the summer. She asked about my stream and getting up at night and so on, did a check, said everything else looked fine and that this has a name, post-micturition dribble. She sent me to a continence nurse who gave me some pelvic floor exercises and showed me a technique for afterwards.

Five weeks in. Some days better, some not. My question is: are the exercises for this meant to be the same as the ones for leaking? Because everything I read online about pelvic floor exercises is either about women after babies or men after prostate surgery, and I am neither.

I am the men after prostate surgery one, and for what it is worth, mine is a different beast. Mine was leaking when I stood up or coughed. Yours sounds like it is only after the event. Different timing, different thing, I would have thought.

Glad you went to the GP first. Took me far too long to say anything about anything.

Only thing I would add from a completely different problem: if the exercises ever start to make things ache or feel worse, say so rather than pushing harder. Mine turned out to be the wrong kind of exercise for the muscle I actually had.

Andy, thank you for asking this, because it is exactly the gap you describe: almost nothing written for men who are not post-prostatectomy. I am a teacher, not a clinician, so I cannot tell you how your own exercises should be set up; your continence nurse can, and it is a completely reasonable thing to ring and ask. What I can do is tell you what the evidence says, because I went looking for it for a friend.

Gerry is right that the timing is what makes it a different symptom. Post-micturition dribble is a small loss after you have finished and walked away, not on effort and not with urgency. The usual explanation is that a little urine stays in the part of the urethra behind the scrotum and runs out when you move.

There is one randomised trial specifically for this, from 1997, in 49 men aged 36 to 83 who had not had bladder, urethral or prostate surgery. Over 12 weeks, the group doing pelvic floor exercises reduced their urine loss more than the group doing urethral milking (an adjusted 4.7 g against 2.9 g), and counselling alone made no difference. It is small and old, so it is a reason to keep going rather than a promise. Note also that it excluded men after prostate surgery, so it is genuinely about your situation rather than Gerry's.

The technique the nurse showed you for afterwards sounds like urethral milking, which in that trial helped too, just less than the exercises. Five weeks is under halfway through the length of that trial. The symptoms that mean going back to the GP rather than carrying on are set out in red flags and when to stop and get checked.

Esther Vaughan said:

Five weeks is under halfway through the length of that trial.

That is the bit I needed. I had more or less decided at five weeks that it was not doing anything. Rang the nurse, she said the same as you, keep going to twelve and review then, and she checked I was doing the squeeze properly, which I was not quite.

Week nine. Not gone but noticeably less often, and smaller when it happens. I have worn the light grey trousers to work twice this month, which I realise is not a sentence anyone else will find exciting.

Review at twelve weeks is booked.