Luts-V: A new simplified score for assessing lower urinary tract symptoms in men

Abstract

Objectives: Develop and validate a new and simplified score for evaluating the lower urinary tract symptoms in men. Materials and methods: We modified the existing visual prostate symptom score, including changes in the images, sequence, and new alternatives, resulting in a new visual score (LUTS visual score-LUTS-V). For the validation of the new tool, we used the International Prostatic Symptom Score as the gold-standard and the new LUTS-V to 306 men. The total IPSS score and the total LUTS-V score of each subject were evaluated to determine the agreement between the two instruments. ROC curve was used to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy and best cut-off of LUTS-V. Sensitivity, specificity, and diagnostic odds ratios were used to describe the diagnostic properties. Results: The mean age of the participants was 59 [52-87] years. There was a significant correlation between LUTS-V and IPSS. (r=0.72 (p <0.0001). The Bland-Altman analyzes demonstrate good agreement between the two questionnaires (bias=5.6 %). LUTS-V demonstrated excellent diagnostic accuracy in detecting the most serious cases with an area under the ROC curve of 83 % [78-87 %] 95 % CI. p <0.001). LUTS-V >4 was the best threshold, with a sensitivity of 74 % and specificity of 78 %. Conclusions: LUTS-V is a simple, self-administered tool with a significant discriminatory power to identify subjects with moderate to severe LUTS and may represent a useful instrument for the diagnosis and follow-up of men with urinary symptoms.