Purpose: We quantified the degree of symptomatic overlap in individuals who reported urological symptoms and compared these patterns between men and women.
Materials and methods: A questionnaire was mailed to a random sample of the Kaiser Permanente Northwest membership with no medical record evidence of pelvic malignancy or neurological disease. The questionnaire included the International Prostate Symptom Scale, Interstitial Cystitis Symptom Index and Problem Index, and National Institutes of Health Chronic Prostatitis Symptom Index. The 701 men and 745 women who reported urological symptoms were selected for analysis. The degree of overlap of storage symptoms, voiding symptoms and pain symptoms was assessed. Multiple logistic regression was used to determine symptom predictors.
Results: There was a high degree of overlap among the 3 symptom categories with few observed differences between men and women. Of individuals with storage or voiding symptoms 34% of men and 43% of women also had pain symptoms. Of those with pain 90% of men and 94% of women also had voiding or storage symptoms. Logistic regression results indicated that frequency, urgency and any storage symptoms were statistically more common in women than in men, while a slow stream was more common in men than in women.
Conclusions: As previously reported, there are limited differences in the degree and distribution of lower urinary tract symptoms in men and women. To our knowledge the novel finding of this study is that pain symptoms commonly coincide with voiding and storage symptoms in the 2 genders. This suggests that categorizing patients into disease categories, such as lower urinary tract symptoms or bladder conditions, may ignore the pain components of symptoms. A symptom based classification symptom may more accurately identify and address all patient complaints.