Comparison of “subjective” and “objective” measures of severity of urinary incontinence in women

The aims of this study were to compare “subjective” measures of severity of urinary incontinence to similar “objective” measures, establish their statistical correlation, and determine the effect of specific urodynamic diagnosis on such correlations. Baseline data was available from 265 women entered into a clinical trial studying pharmacologic and behavioral interventions for urinary incontinence. The “subjective” measures of incontinence were obtained by patient recall during history taking and included: the number of incontinent episodes in I week, the number of perincal pads used during I week, and the number ot clothing changes required due to wetness. The “objective” measures of severity included: the number of incontinent episodes per week as recorded on a 7‐day diary, the number of perineal pads used per week, also recorded on a diary, and the amount of fluid lost during a standardized pad test Analysis consisted of Pearson correlations and linear regressions to determine equations for the prediction of objective measurement on the basis of the corresponding subjective measure. Significant positive correlations were seen between “subjective” and “objective” measurements for the comparisons of number of weekly incontinent episodes (R = 0.63), and tor the weekly number of pads used (R = 0.81). The comparison between the number of clothing changes and the amount of fluid lost during pad testing was also significantly but less strongly correlated (R = 0.24). For the correlations between subjective and objective determinations of urinary incontinent episodes and for those between clothing changes and pad testing, the urodynamic diagnosis had no effect on the correlation coefficients, but did have a statistically significant effect on the intercept. “Subjective” measures of severity of urinary incontinence will provide a reasonable estimate of “objective” measures of severity of urinary incontinence in women. Therefore in a clinical setting, it seems logical to use “subjective” measures to assess both baseline severity and response to intervention. © 1995 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.