Patient-reported outcomes in overactive bladder: importance for determining clinical effectiveness of treatment

Overactive bladder (OAB) is a condition defined by its symptoms--urinary urgency with or without urgency urinary incontinence and often with frequency and nocturia. As such, determining the efficacy of OAB treatments using objective measures, such as urodynamic testing, can be difficult. A better means of gauging treatment efficacy for symptom-based conditions is through the use of patient-reported outcomes (PROs). With PROs, clinicians can gain insight into how a treatment affects a patient's symptoms and whether improvement in symptoms has a positive effect from the patient's perspective. PROs are increasingly being included as end points in clinical trials, including those of antimuscarinic drugs for OAB. Consequently, clinicians should become familiar with the most commonly used instruments. We provide an overview of instruments used to assess symptoms, health-related quality of life, and treatment satisfaction in patients with OAB and discuss how PROs can be incorporated into clinical trial protocols.