Presenting Symptoms of Anterior Urethral Stricture Disease: A Disease Specific, Patient Reported Questionnaire to Measure Outcomes

Abstract

While the American Urological Association symptom index captures the most common voiding complaints of men with urethral stricture, 21% of those who presented for urethroplasty did not have voiding symptoms assessed by the index. A validated, disease specific instrument is needed to fully capture the presenting voiding symptoms and sexual dysfunction complaints of men with urethral stricture disease.

Psychometric validation of a German language version of a PROM for urethral stricture surgery and preliminary testing of supplementary ED and UI constructs

“…It demonstrates the importance of evaluating HRQoL even in patients undergoing USS and stands in contrast to other studies assessing functional related QoL only [8,28,29].…”

“…Assessing, reporting and comparing these outcome measures clearly aim to improve quality of care and reduce costs [6][7][8]. If physicians make treatment decisions based on health outcomes, medical errors and unnecessary treatments could be prevented; thus, patients are more likely to receive high-quality care [9].…”

“…In addition, men who undergo urethroplasty for urethral stricture disease are at great concern on erectile function and urinary incontinence. Unfortunately, the current USS-PROM does not address these healthcare outcomes, which is criticized by several authors [7,8,12,13].…”

Critical Review of Existing Patient Reported Outcome Measures After Male Anterior Urethroplasty

“…[5][6][7][8] Three articles used the AUA-SS instrument, which was originally developed for men with benign prostatic hyperplasia, 5-7 and the other article contained an instrument that was developed specifically for men with anterior urethral strictures. 8 The LUTS instrument was used in a different manner for each of the 4 studies.…”

“…5 They concluded that the AUA-SS has a floor effect in that approximately 21% of preoperative LUTS related to a known anterior urethral stricture was not captured. In 2011 Jackson et al published the only anterior urethroplasty specific instrument.…”