Development and internal validation of a screening tool for chronic prostatitis (S-CP).

Area of Science:

• Urology
• Public Health
• Diagnostic Tool Development

Background:

• Chronic prostatitis affects a significant number of men, often leading to delayed diagnosis and treatment.
• A simple, accessible screening method is needed to encourage early consultation with urologists.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a simple self-checkable screening tool for chronic prostatitis (S-CP).
• To encourage men with potential chronic prostatitis symptoms to seek professional medical advice.

Main Methods:

• An expert panel developed the S-CP tool with three domains: pain, accompanying symptoms, and triggers.
• Logistic regression was used to predict chronic prostatitis prevalence based on S-CP scores.
• The tool's predictive performance was evaluated using data from a national survey of Japanese men aged 20-84.

Main Results:

• The S-CP demonstrated an optimism-adjusted area under the curve of 0.761, indicating reasonable predictive performance.
• With a cutoff of two positive domains, the S-CP achieved 62.0% sensitivity and 85.4% specificity.
• Positive and negative likelihood ratios were 4.2 and 0.45, respectively, with high negative predictive value (99.4%).

Conclusions:

• The S-CP shows promise as a first-step screening tool for identifying individuals with chronic prostatitis in the general population.
• Further research is recommended to develop diagnostic support tools for clinical settings.