Relationship among Symptom Score, Urinary Flow Rates, and Prostate Volume in 620 Men with Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms

Kim, Dae Young; Oh, Seung June; Lee, Kyeong Cheol; Kang, Jeongyoon; Shim, Bong Suk; Kwon, Sung Won; Lee, Sang Eun

Abstract

PURPOSE: We aimed to investigate the relationships among age, International Prostate Symptom Score(IPSS), uroflowmetry and prostate volume in men with lower urinary tract symptom(LUTS).
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Among the 847 men who participated in the BPH awareness program, 620 men(73.2%) who had not LUTS or had LUTS without concomitant conditions(except BPH) known to interfere with normal voiding were selected. All of them completed IPSS questionnaire, uroflowmetry and transrectal ultrasonography. We calculated correlation coefficient to investigate the association among age, maximal flow rate, mean flow rate, and prostate volume. Additionally, total men were stratified by 3 age groups and 3 IPSS groups, and we also evaluated relationships among the parameters according to these groups.
RESULTS
The statistically significant correlations were found among the age, uroflowmetry and prostate volume. Total symptom score did not show significant correlation with age. However, irritative symptom score increased with increasing age in statistically significant manner. When we stratified men into three age groups, most of the correlations were stronger in the younger than 60 years old group than those observed in the entire population. According to a multivariate regression analysis, age and prostate volume did not show statistically significant correlation with IPSS. When the all men were classified according to the IPSS, there were significant differences between maximal flow rate, mean flow rate and prostate volume.
CONCLUSIONS
Emerging from this analysis showed that age is the important factor influencing the relationship among symptom score, urinary flow rate and prostate volume. LUTS may be affected by some factor such detrusor tone as well as prostate volume. We suggest that the development of more objective and sophisticated studies such as urodynamic study, molecular biologic study for functional morphology of detrusor and community-based study with longitudinal measurements will be necessary to approach the pathogenesis of LUTS.