Urodynamic assessment of the bashful bladder.

PURPOSE

We prospectively studied the potential contribution of ambulatory urodynamic monitoring in men with urinary symptoms unable to initiate a void on conventional video cystometrography.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

A total of 40 consecutive symptomatic men with a median International Prostate Symptom Score of 19 (range 1 to 29) and median age of 51.9 years (range 30 to 75) who were unable to void during video cystometrography underwent ambulatory urodynamic monitoring. Solid-state transducers mounted on silicone coated catheters were inserted urethrally and rectally, and connected to a portable recorder. Subjects voided in private into a specially designed flow meter, which they connected to the recording device.

RESULTS

Of the patients 2 (5%) failed to attend ambulatory urodynamic monitoring, despite multiple reminders, and in 1 (2.5%) the trace was uninterpretable. Pressure flow data were available for the remaining 37 patients with mean plus or minus standard deviation 2.72+/-0.1 storage void cycles recorded per patient. All 6 patients (15%) with obstruction were older than 40 years. In 6 cases (15%) obstruction was equivocal and the remainder were unobstructed. Transurethral prostatic resection in 2 and urethrotomy in 1 of 6 patients with obstruction resulted in subjective and objective improvement.

CONCLUSIONS

The bashful bladder syndrome was not associated with any specific urodynamic diagnosis. Ambulatory urodynamic monitoring will yield a urodynamic diagnosis in more than 90% of cases after failure to record void data on video cystometrography. A surgically correctable cause of symptoms can be found in about 20% of men older than 40 years. The contribution of ambulatory urodynamic monitoring compared to more conventional evaluation in men younger than 40 years is negligible.