The relationships among filling,voiding subscores from International Prostate Symptom Score and quality of life in Japanese elderly men and women

OBJECTIVES: Lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) are reported to influence the quality of life (QoL) of the elderly. The aim of this study was to elucidate the relationships among filling problems, voiding problems and QoL in elderly men and women. METHODS: A total of 450 males and 228 females, aged 50 years or older responded to a questionnaire, which included seven questions from the International Prostate Symptom Score (I-PSS) and 16 questions from the King's Health Questionnaire (KHQ). The relations among the filling, voiding subscores deliverable from I-PSS, and KHQ-QoL were investigated. RESULTS: The voiding subscore significantly correlated with the filling subscore with a considerably large standard deviation, and the filling subscore also significantly correlated with I-PSS in both genders. KHQ-QoL was significantly associated with the filling and voiding subscores in almost all domains of the KHQ. Multiple regression analyses demonstrated the filling, voiding subscores, and I-PSS explained the 55% or greater reduction in the QoL in six, four, six domains in men and four, three, four domains in women, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The filling problems are slightly more associated with KHQ-QoL than voiding problems but filling problems did not appear to predominantly affect QoL as expected in both genders. We believe it valid to use I-PSS to evaluate voiding problems as well as filling problems in the elderly women.