Re. A Narrative Review of Patient-reported Outcomes in Overactive Bladder: What is the Way of the Future?

The current design of trials on treatments for overactive bladder (OAB) is considered to be suboptimal. A strong placebo effect is often described, and investigation into possible causes of such an effect deserves careful consideration. Review of the peer-reviewed literature suggests that treatment outcome is currently measured via different tools, including bladder diaries, symptom questionnaires, and patient-reported outcome (PRO) tools. Although bladder diaries have often been considered the gold standard for quantification of primary outcome parameters such as urgency, urgency incontinence, frequency, and nocturia, they are not devoid of problems, including psychometric validation, adherence, and patient burden. Experience in other therapeutic areas suggests that a different approach can be pursued, such as use of symptom questionnaires, disease-related quality of life (QoL) measures, and PROs. In the field of functional urology, attention should be paid to patient satisfaction, symptom improvement, QoL, and treatment-related side effects. The authors recommend revision of the methodology for trials on treatments for OAB and adoption of a simpler but comprehensive evaluation of outcomes using PROs to measure primary outcome parameters.