Validation of a simple patient questionnaire to assist self-detection of overactive bladder A study in general practice

Objective – To develop and validate a simple patient questionnaire for the detection of overactive bladder (OAB).Design – An open, non-randomized multicentre study.Setting – A pilot study (n=133) was conducted to bring forward five questions from initially 14 questions, for detection of OAB. These five questions were subject to further validation in the main study (n=520).Subjects – 531 adults responding to a newspaper advertisement regarding symptoms of OAB and patients seeing a physician for other reasons were attending 28 general practitioners.Main outcome measures – Agreement rate, sensitivity, and specificity.Results – The agreement rate between the patients’ own diagnosis based on the patient questionnaire, and the physicians’ diagnosis based on medical history, urine analysis, and micturition chart, was 0.78 (κ=0.89). Sensitivity and specificity were 0.98 and 0.90, respectively.Conclusion – The validated questionnaire may become a useful tool to decide whether a patient has overactive bladder. The ...