Impact of drug therapy on benign prostatic hyperplasia-specific quality oflife

Quality of life (QOL) is an important issue when assessing medical treatmen t of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). There are many QOL questionnaires available, and disease-specific questionnaires are being developed. Current ly, most patients undergoing treatment for BPH receive alpha-blockers or fi nasteride, To determine which QOL measures are being used, we did a Medline search covering the past 10 years and found Il studies in which BPH-QOL wa s investigated. The wide variety of questionnaires used made comparison bet ween drug studies difficult. When comparing studies that used at least one similar questionnaire to that of another drug study, we found alpha-blocker treatment excelled over finasteride in improving BPH-QOL in the areas of e arlier response, larger decreases in mean changes, and reduced sexual side effects. OOL assessment should be a routine part of BPH treatment, and more standardized and validated measures should be used to allow for comparativ e, meaningful analyses. UROLOGY 53: 1090-1098, 1999. (C) 1999, Elsevier Sci ence Inc. All rights reserved.