Classification of female urinary incontinence by the scored incontinence questionnaire.

OBJECTIVES

Our purpose was to investigate whether urinary incontinence (UI) severity could be graded by UI scores.

METHODS

The study included 168 UI patients diagnosed by conventional procedures as stress incontinence (SI, n=108) or urge incontinence (URI, n=60). A questionnaire containing 15 items scored for stress-score (s-s) and urge-score (u-s) was administered to patients to assess the correlation between pad test values (PTVs) and s-s in SI and u-s in URI.

RESULTS

Significant correlations were found between log[PTVs] and both s-s and u-s: log[PTV(SI)]=0.051s-s-0.207 (r=0.830, P<0.0001) and log[PTV(URI)]=0.064u-s-0.459 (r=0.827, P<0. 0001). Based on theoretical PTVs obtained using these equations, s-s of 26-24, 23-18, and 17-10 in SI were equivalent to severe, moderate, and mild, respectively, and u-s of 22-19 and 18-12 in URI were equivalent to moderate and mild, respectively, according to the classification of the International Continence Society.

CONCLUSION

The UI score should be a simple and useful procedure for use by general gynecologists to grade UI severity clinically.