Use of a 7-day diary for urinary symptom recording

A cohort of 254 men, aged 40-79 years, was followed up at 1 year in a community-based survey of benign prostatic hyperplasia. Immediately after completing a questionnaire about the occurrence of 12 urinary symptoms over the previous month, the men were invited to keep a prospective diary asking about the same symptoms over 7 consecutive days in order to assess the amount of day-to-day variation in symptoms and to examine to what extent the findings reflected those of the retrospective questionnaire. The majority of men reported minor degrees of daily fluctuations in symptoms. Only modest correlations existed between the diary mean and maximum score for each symptom and the corresponding retrospective questionnaire score. Where repeated assessments of urinary symptom status are considered necessary a prospective diary may be more appropriate than a retrospective questionnaire.