Diagnostic agreement of the 3 Incontinence Questionnaire to video-urodynamics findings in women with urinary incontinence

Introduction There are limited studies evaluating the 3 Incontinence Questionnaire (3IQ) against urodynamics based diagnosis as a reference standard. The 3IQ has been proposed to be useful to evaluate women at the level of primary care. The aim of this study was to determine correlation between 3IQ and video-urodynamics (VUDS) in diagnosing types of urinary incontinence. Material and methods Prospective data was collected on 200 consecutive female patients referred by primary care physicians for urinary incontinence. The mean age was 55 years (range 15-83 years). The patients were evaluated using the 3IQ and video-urodynamics. The 3IQ-based diagnosis of type of female urinary incontinence was compared to VUDS-based results. Sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratios and positive predictive values were calculated. Results On 3IQ based self-evaluation, 28% of patients were classified as having stress urinary incontinence, 20% with urge incontinence and 40% with mixed incontinence. On video-urodynamics, urodynamic stress urinary incontinence (UDSUI) was detected in 56% of patients, detrusor overactivity (DO) in 15% and mixed urinary incontinence (MUI) in 19%. The 3IQ had a sensitivity and specificity respectively of 43% and 92% for UDSUI, 57% and 86% for DO and 58% and 64% for MUI. The corresponding positive likelihood ratios (CI, 95%) were 5.4 (CI 2.6 to 11.3) for stress urinary incontinence, 4.0 (CI 2.5 to 6.5) for DO and 1.62 (1.2 to 2.3) for MUI. The respective positive predictive values were 87% (CI 75% to 95%), 42% (CI 26% to 58%) and 28% (18% to 39%). Conclusions In our study population, stress urinary incontinence was reasonably well predicted by the 3IQ, but the questionnaire under-performed in the diagnoses of detrusor overactivity and mixed urinary incontinence.