2014 LUTS-FORTA Consensus gives one drug licensed for OAB a beneficial rating

ICS is pleased to be able to recognise a collaboration with Pfizer, in order to highlight a recent publication which sought to systematically review the appropriateness of drugs commonly used to treat lower urinary tract symptoms for older people, in which ICS members played a key role. This venture is part of ICS strategy to diversify our income streams and the grant will be used to support travel awards for the Annual Scientific Meeting in Tokyo in 2016. These awards are available to those in the early stage of their career, developing countries, nurses and physiotherapists.

This article is not intended for patients or members of the general public as it contains promotional content aimed at healthcare professionals.

Although overactive bladder (OAB) is a common condition often seen in elderly patients as its prevalence increases with age, there is no systematic comparative study on the published evidence base for the appropriateness or inappropriateness of available drugs for these elderly patients suffering from LUTS. ^{1 2}

However, an international interdisciplinary panel of experts has recently systematically reviewed and classified sixteen drugs from different drug classes for the long-term treatment of lower urinary tract symptoms in older people, resulting in the LUTS-FORTA 2014 consensus.

The LUTS-FORTA classification used all available data in a systematic review and subsequent Delphi exercise in order to classify drugs according to A, B C D (FORTA-A Absolutely; FORTA-B beneficial; FORTA-C careful and FORTA-D avoid). The drugs can be classified based on data analysed from clinical studies and product characteristics by efficacy, safety and tolerability in people ≥ 65 years. It resulted in 3 of the commonly used LUTS drugs being classified as B-Beneficial.

FORTA classification

|--|--|--|--|--|
|LUTS Drug Class|FORTA-A|FORTA-B|FORTA-C|FORTA-D|
||(Absolutely)|(Beneficial)|(Careful)|(Don’t)|
|α-Blocker|||Tamsulosin, Silodosin|Alfuzosin, Doxazosin, Terazosin|
|Antimuscarinics||Fesoterodine|Darifenacin, Oxybutynin ER, Solifenacin, Trospium Tolterodine|Oxybutynin IR Propiverine|
|5α-Reductase inhibitors||Dutasteride, Finasteride|||
|PDE5 Inhibitors|||Tadalafil||
|β-Agonists|||Mirabegron||

¹ Oelke M, et al. Age Ageing. 2015;44(5):745-55.
² Wagg AS. Drugs Aging. 2012 Jul 1;29(7):539-48.

Pfizer Pharma GmbH funded the meeting and the conduct of the systematic literature analysis including assistance for writing of the manuscript, but had no influence on the contents.

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