An online UPOINT tool for phenotyping patients with chronic prostatitis

To evaluate the clinical phenotypes of patients with chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome (CP/CPPS) using a web based online tool and to compare these clinical features with patients evaluated in a tertiary referral clinic.

Data was collected from 720 men who gave complete online responses on a website which determines the UPOINT clinical phenotype in CP/CPPS and measures symptom severity with the National Institutes of Health Chronic Prostatitis Symptom Index (NIH-CPSI). This was compared to phenotype and symptom severity of 220 patients evaluated in person at a tertiary referral clinic.

The web-based cohort had CPSI scores of 11.1, 4.8, 7.6, and 23.6 for pain, urinary, quality-of-life, and total score, respectively. The percentage of patients positive for each domain was 76%, 74%, 75%, 10%, 46%, and 75% for the urinary, psychosocial, organ specific, infection, neurologic/systemic, and tenderness domains, respectively. There was a positive correlation between CPSI and number of positive UPOINT domains (p = 0.25, p < 0.0001). Comparison between web- and clinic-based groups showed that the clinic group had fewer UPOINT positive domains compared to the web-based group (2.9 versus 3.6, p < 0.0001), but had worse quality-of-life (9.0 versus 7.6, p < 0.0001) and CPSI total scores (25.0 versus 23.6, p = 0.0052).

Men using an online tool to clinically phenotype CP/CPPS show similar correlations between UPOINT domains, symptom severity, age and duration. While symptom severity was worse in patients seen in a tertiary referral clinic, the differences were small.