A comparative study of patient experiences of conventional fluoroscopic and four-hour ambulatory urodynamic studies

We assessed several emotional variables in patients experiencing conventional urodynamic and ambulatory urodynamic monitoring (AUM) to verify the hypothesis that AUM is tolerated as well as conventional urodynamics. A total of 33 women and 7 men from 23 to 72 years of age who were undergoing both procedures were prospectively included in this study. Prior to and immediately after the procedures, each patient completed a self-administered questionnaire. Answers were given on a visual analogue scale. The degree of anxiety was higher for conventional urodynamics than for AUM (p = 0.045), while the degree of boredom experienced during AUM was higher than that during conventional urodynamics (p= 0.013). There was no significant difference in the degree of shame or bother experienced by the patients during the two procedures. In general, patients tolerated both examinations extremely well. The examiner-rated degree of intolerance during conventional urodynamics was influenced by the subjective pain score (p=0.001), while all other emotional variables except bother were not significantly related with the degree of intolerance during AUM (p=0.007). A total of 74.4% and 84.6% responded that they were willing to repeat conventional urodynamics and AUM, respectively, which were not significantly different. Although AUM produced a significantly higher level of boredom than conventional urodynamics, our data demonstrates that patients are as tolerant of AUM as they are of conventional urodynamic procedures.