MULTICHANNEL URETHRAL PRESSURE PROFILES - REPRODUCIBILITY AND 3-DIMENSIONAL REPRESENTATION

Urethral pressure profilometry (UPP) is used to investigate the pressu re distribution in the urethra, Single UPP is dependent on the orienta tion of the catheter during the study, To circumvent this problem, we developed a system for multichannel profilometry (MCUPP) that can be u sed in daily clinical practice, In the study reported in this article, 29 healthy female volunteers (mean age 34.6 years) underwent MCUPP, T he mean time needed to make five pressure profiles ranged from 4 to 12 minutes (mean 7.6), The system is patient- and user-friendly, The vol unteers scored the discomfort on a 1 to 10 scale, with 10 meaning no d iscomfort at all, rendering a mean score of 7.6, The Symmetry Index (S I) is a calculated variable expressing the asymmetry in the pressure p rofiles, An SI of 1 means a completely symmetrical pattern of pressure distribution. The mean SI for the whole group was 0.7 (range 0.407-0. 930), The standard deviation was 0.109. Within-subject SI was highly r eproducible (Greenhouse-Geisser epsilon = 0.98292).