HEALTH-RELATED QUALITY-OF-LIFE MEASURES FOR WOMEN WITH URINARY-INCONTINENCE - THE INCONTINENCE IMPACT QUESTIONNAIRE AND THE UROGENITAL DISTRESS INVENTORY

Urinary incontinence (UI) is a relatively common condition in middle-a ged and older women. Traditional measures of symptoms do not adequatel y capture the impact that UI has on individuals' lives. Further, sever e morbidity and mortality are not associated with this condition. Rath er, UI's impact is primarily on the health status and health-related q uality of life (HRQOL) of women. Generic measures of HRQOL inadequatel y address the impact of the condition on the day-to-day lives of women with UI. The current paper presents data on two new condition-specifi c instruments designed to assess the HRQOL of UI in women: the Urogeni tal Distress Inventory (UDI) and the Incontinence Impact Questionnaire (IIQ). Used in conjunction with one another, these two measures provi de detailed information on how UI affects the lives of women. The meas ures provide data on the more traditional view of HRQOL by assessing t he impact of UI on various activities, roles and emotional states (IIQ ), as well as data on the less traditional but critical issue of the d egree to which symptoms associated with UI are troubling to women (UDI ). Data on the reliability, validity and sensitivity to change of thes e measures demonstrate that they are psychometrically strong. Further, they have been developed for simple, self-administration.