Sacral nerve electrical stimulation (sacral neuromodulation) therapy for pa
tients with refractory urge incontinence, frequency and urgency, and nonobs
tructive retention yields an effective 75%-80% success rate. Electrodes are
surgically implanted if initial percutaneous stimulation testing has a suc
cessful clinical response. Unfortunately, up to 50% of patients are denied
surgical implantation because of an unsuccessful response to the test stimu
lation. In this descriptive study, adding electrodiagnostic monitoring to t
he currently used biological monitoring techniques was associated with a re
duction in the number of tested patients denied implantation to 20%. These
findings suggest that the incorporation of electrodiagnostic techniques may
improve the clinical efficacy of sacral stimulation therapy. Randomized pr
ospective testing of this hypothesis is suggested.