Women's attitudes to urodynamics: a questionnaire survey

Abstract

Objective: To obtain a measure of how well women tolerate urodynamic investigations and to determine how well they thought the test was explained.

Design: Prospective questionnaire survey.

Setting: A teaching hospital tertiary referral centre urodynamic laboratory.

Participants: Three hundred and twenty-four women attending for urodynamic investigations on 331 occasions. Questionnaires were returned from 297 women (91.7%) with six women returning two questionnaires.

Results: Urodynamic investigations were well tolerated by most women, with 45% feeling that the procedure was not as bad as they expected. Moderate or severe anxiety about the test was experienced by 42% and 40% felt moderately or severely embarrassed. Pain was noted by 27% of women during investigation, and by 13% after investigation. Overall distress from the procedure was less in older women and in those who had been referred from a specialist urogynaecology clinic. Distress was higher when difficulties were encountered during the investigation and in women who had investigations other than a standard cystometrogram. Women were likely to find the test less distressing when they felt they had been given adequate information about the test.

Conclusions: Although urodynamic investigations are generally well tolerated, there is a significant minority of women who find the test embarrassing, painful and distressing.