Hypothesis / aims of study
-ICIQ-UI short form is a self administered questionnaire that aims to evaluate the frequency, intensity, impact in quality of life and pattern of urinary incontinence (UI). The first two questions about frequency and intensity of incontinence have graded answers. Quality of life (QoL) is measured as an analogical scale from 0 to 10. The last part of the questionnaire describes different UI patterns which lets us categorize into stress, urgency, mixed, enuresis or postmicturitional urinary incontinence.
-Leaking when you cough or sneeze or when you are physically active or exercising are characteristic of stress UI. Leaking before getting to the toilet is characteristic of urgency incontinence and Mixed UI has characteristics of both. But "leaking for no obvious reason" or "all the time" are not characteristic of any type of UI, but they seem to confer severity to UI. Our goal is to determine wether these last two patterns add severity to pure stress, urgency or mixed urinary incontinence
Study design, materials and methods
-We retrospectively reviewed 395 records of women evaluated for LUTS.
-Neurogenic patients were excluded
-Patients were categorized into 3 main UI patterns: stress, urgency and mixed.
-These patterns were subcategorized as "severe" (S) if they also "leaked all the time" or "for no obvious reason" and "non-severe" (NS) if they did not.
-Frequency, intensity and quality of life scores between the 3 main patterns of UI were compared, as well as between S and NS UI patterns with Kruskal-Wallis test
Results
-Sixty nine patients (17.4%) were excluded because they did not have UI and 33 (8,3%) because they did not fit in any of these patterns (3 had postmicturition UI, 23 had only unnoticed or continuous incontinence but not any of the 3 main types of UI and 7 did not have any pattern).
-A total of 293 patients were included: 62 (21,2%) had SUI (48 NS-SUI, 14 S-SUI); 75 (25,6%) UUI (57 NS-UUI, 18 S-UUI) and 156 (53,2%) MUI (66 NS-MUI, 90 S-MUI).
-In Figure 1, we show how scores for frequency, amount and QoL are significantly different for the 3 main UI patterns. MUI had the highest scores, followed by UUI and finally SUI with the lowest scores.
-S-UI patterns had significantly higher scores than NS-UI patterns for every main type of UI pattern (Figure 2).
Interpretation of results
-SUI, IUU and MUI have different partial ICIQ-UI short form scores.
-Patients with S-UI leak more frequently and a greater amount of urine than NS-UI patients and their QoL is worse for any of the 3 main patterns of UI.