Compliance with recommendations of the urodynamic society for standards of efficacy for evaluation of treatment outcomes in urinary incontinence

Abstract

The Urodynamic Society (US) published (1997) minimal standards to assess the efficacy of therapy for urinary incontinence (UI). The standards were developed by a US committee and were approved by the American Urological Society. The objective of our study was to evaluate compliance with these standards in recent UI research studies. A MEDLINE search was conducted for all articles in which outcomes of treatment for UI were reported (November, 1997-October, 1999). Reported data were compared with the recommended minimum standards including pre- and posttreatment data. Compliance rates for each data field were calculated by percentages for (1) the individual article and (2) overall compliance rate among all articles. A total of 39 articles that reported treatment for UI were selected. The treatments included various surgical procedures, injectables, pharmacologic treatments, and mechanical valves. Overall compliance for each article varied between 0% and 100%. Only one article met all 100% of the recommendations and one met none. The overall mean compliance rate for each article was 29%. We conclude that there is far less than optimal reporting of outcomes for treatment of UI per the recommendations of the Urodynamic Society. This low compliance makes standardized evaluation of treatment outcomes of UI difficult if not impossible. We suggest that initiation of funded cooperative clinical trials may improve the standardization in UI. © 2002 Wiley-Liss, Inc.