Validation of timed micturition--a comparison of flow rates measured at home manually and electronically

To compare and evaluate manually performed timed micturition in a domestic setting with registrations made using a home flowmeter.

Forty-six randomly selected men without voiding symptoms performed timed micturition at home both by hand and with a Da Capo home flowmeter. Statistical comparison using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test and regression analysis of the differences was performed to evaluate whether the two methods were comparable.

In two cases, there was a large discrepancy between the two methods. For the remaining 44 men, there were no statistically significant differences between the two methods. The median (range) timed micturition was 7 s (3-35 s) for manual measurements and 6.5 s (3.5-28 s) for electronic measurements. For each individual, the difference between the manually and electronically obtained medians was calculated. The average individual difference was 0.06 s (SD 1.6 s).

Approximately 95% of men are able to measure timed micturition at home manually without statistically or clinically significant differences from electronically obtained measurements. One has to be aware that in a small proportion of cases timed micturition measured at home may be falsely long.