Comparison of patients' and physicians' rating of urinary incontinence following radical prostatectomy.

One of the most important endpoints following a radical prostatectomy focuses on the recovery of urinary continence; however, the reported incontinence rates have been quite variable. In men with prostate cancer, it has been found that the physician's assessment of a patient's symptom does not correlate with the patient's own assessment. To further explore the differences in the reported outcomes between physicians and patients, we evaluated the assessment of urinary incontinence in a cohort of men undergoing radical prostatectomy. A total of 145 individuals completed a brief urinary continence questionnaire postoperatively at the 1-year anniversary of their operation and also had the physicians' assessment of incontinence documented in the medical record. Patient-reported incontinence rates varied from 13% to 65% depending on the definition of incontinence applied and the greatest agreement was seen when the physicians' assessment of incontinence was compared with the patient's report of pad use and urinary bother. These comparisons resulted in only moderate to good levels of agreement, which suggests that a more reliable and accurate means to evaluate urinary incontinence following radical prostatectomy needs to be developed.