Metaepidemiological Inventory of Diagnostic Studies on Urodynamics

Urodynamic investigations have a pivotal role in the diagnosis of lower urinary tract symptoms. Despite expert statements and guidelines supporting their usefulness for clinical decision making in various clinical domains, the academic debate remains controversial.

To provide a metaepidemiological inventory of studies assessing the diagnostic properties of urodynamic investigations.

Systematic searches without language restrictions were performed in (Pre-)Medline, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library from inception until August 31, 2018. Checking of reference lists of included studies and reviews complemented searches. Records were compiled and screened for possible inclusion by reading title and abstracts by two teams of two research fellows. Inclusion criteria were as follows: prospective data collection and urodynamic investigations performed either as a diagnostic test or using a therapy monitoring instrument. No a priori selection on clinical domain was done. Double reading was performed on records marked "included." Extraction into a developed and piloted matrix was performed in duplicate and checked by a third research fellow.

Of each included article, study specifics, objective, study design, type of data collection, clinical domain, type and description of test used, and type of outcome were extracted and attributed to a framework.

Electronic searches retrieved 20 841 records. After screening, 299 abstracts were considered relevant. The main reasons for exclusion were as follows: animal studies, no primary data, editorial/opinion based on published data or reviews, primary objective of the study being not the assessment of urodynamic investigations, and post hoc (opportunistic) correlation studies.

To our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive collection of studies assessing the clinical usefulness of urodynamic investigations. The collection is the starting point for a series of systematic reviews assessing the diagnostic properties of urodynamic investigations.

The usefulness of urodynamic investigations for clinical decision making is under debate. We established an inventory of diagnostic studies on urodynamics to assess the value of urodynamics in various clinical applications.