Women's attitudes to urodynamics: a questionnaire survey

Objective To obtain a measure of how well women tolerate urodynamic investi gations and to determine how well they thought the test was explained. Design Prospective questionnaire survey Setting A teaching hospital tertiary referral centre urodynamic laboratory. Participants Three hundred and twenty-four women attending for urodynamic i nvestigations on 331 occasions. Questionnaires were returned from 297 women (91.7%) with six women returning two questionnaires. Results Urodynamic investigations were well tolerated by most women, with 4 5% feeling that the procedure was not as bad as they expected. Moderate or severe anxiety about the test was experienced by 42% and 40% felt moderatel y or severely embarrassed. Pain was noted by 27% of women during investigat ion, and by 13% after investigation. Overall distress from the procedure wa s less in older women and in those who had been referred from a specialist urogynaecology clinic. Distress was higher when difficulties were encounter ed during the investigation and in women who had investigations other than a standard cystometrogram. Women were likely to find the test less distress ing when they felt they had been given adequate information about the test. Conclusions Although urodynamic investigations are generally well tolerated , there is a significant minority of women who find the test embarrassing, painful and distressing.