Discrepancies between physician interview and a patient self-assessment questionnaire after surgery for pelvic organ...

The objective of this article was to investigate whether there were discrepancies between the physician interview and a patient's self-assessment questionnaire on the functional results after surgery for pelvic organ prolapse. Before their follow-up appointment, 79 patients were sent a validated urogynaecological questionnaire. At the follow-up visit, the physician interviewed the patients using a checklist with ten symptoms and scored the items as present or absent. Seventy-two patients (91.1%) attended the follow-up visit and had completed the questionnaire. There was poor to slight agreement between the interview score and the self-reported responses to the questionnaire on all items. This was illustrated by low kappa coefficients. The physician was more optimistic about the outcome of the operation than was justified according to the answers to a patient self-assessment questionnaire. We therefore recommend the use of validated questionnaires to evaluate surgical outcome because they provide a more realistic (objective) view of the functional results.