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Residents’ podcast: Urinary, bowel and sexual health in older men from Northern Ireland

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Maria Uloko is a Urology Resident at the University of Minnesota Hospital and Giulia Lane is a Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery Fellow at the University of Michigan.

In this podcast they discuss the following BJUI Article of the Week:

Urinary, bowel and sexual health in older men from Northern Ireland

David W. Donnelly*, Conan Donnelly†, Therese Kearney*, David Weller‡, Linda Sharp§, Amy Downing¶, Sarah Wilding¶, PennyWright¶, Paul Kind**, James W.F. Catto††, William R. Cross‡‡, Malcolm D. Mason§§, Eilis McCaughan¶¶, Richard Wagland***, Eila Watson†††, Rebecca Mottram¶, Majorie Allen, Hugh Butcher‡‡‡, Luke Hounsome§§§, Peter Selby, Dyfed Huws¶¶¶, David H. Brewster****, EmmaMcNair****, Carol Rivas††††, Johana Nayoan***, Mike Horton‡‡‡‡, Lauren Matheson†††, Adam W. Glaser and Anna Gavin*

*Northern Ireland Cancer Registry, Centre for Public Health, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK, †National Cancer Registry Ireland, Cork, Ireland, ‡Centre for Population Health Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK, §Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, Leeds Institute of Cancer and Pathology/Leeds Institute of Data Analytics, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK, **Institute of Health Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK, ††Academic Urology Unit, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK, ‡‡Department of Urology, St James’s University Hospital, Leeds, UK, §§Division of Cancer and Genetics, School of Medicine, Velindre Hospital, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK, ¶¶Institute of Nursing and Health Research, Ulster University, Coleraine, UK, ***Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK, †††Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK, ‡‡‡Yorkshire Cancer Patient Forum, c/o Strategic Clinical Network and Senate, Yorkshire and The Humber, Harrogate, UK, §§§National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service, Public Health England, Bristol, UK, ¶¶¶Welsh Cancer Intelligence and Surveillance Unit, Cardiff, UK, ****Information Services Division, NHS National Services Scotland, Edinburgh, UK, ††††Department of Social Science, UCL Institute of Education, University College London, London, UK, and ‡‡‡‡Psychometric Laboratory for Health Sciences, Academic Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

Abstract

 Objectives

To provide data on the prevalence of urinary, bowel and sexual dysfunction in Northern Ireland (NI), to act as a baseline for studies of prostate cancer outcomes and to aid service provision within the general population.

Subjects and Methods

A cross‐sectional postal survey of 10 000 men aged ≥40 years in NI was conducted and age‐matched to the distribution of men living with prostate cancer. The EuroQoL five Dimensions five Levels (EQ‐5D‐5L) and 26‐item Expanded Prostate Cancer Composite (EPIC‐26) instruments were used to enable comparisons with prostate cancer outcome studies. Whilst representative of the prostate cancer survivor population, the age‐distribution of the sample differs from the general population, thus data were generalised to the NI population by excluding those aged 40–59 years and applying survey weights. Results are presented as proportions reporting problems along with mean composite scores, with differences by respondent characteristics assessed using chi‐squared tests, analysis of variance, and multivariable log‐linear regression.

Results

Amongst men aged ≥60 years, 32.8% reported sexual dysfunction, 9.3% urinary dysfunction, and 6.5% bowel dysfunction. In all, 38.1% reported at least one problem and 2.1% all three. Worse outcome was associated with increasing number of long‐term conditions, low physical activity, and higher body mass index (BMI). Urinary incontinence, urinary irritation/obstruction, and sexual dysfunction increased with age; whilst urinary incontinence, bowel, and sexual dysfunction were more common among the unemployed.

Conclusion

These data provide an insight into sensitive issues seldom reported by elderly men, which result in poor general health, but could be addressed given adequate service provision. The relationship between these problems, raised BMI and low physical activity offers the prospect of additional health gain by addressing public health issues such as obesity. The results provide essential contemporary population data against which outcomes for those living with prostate cancer can be compared. They will facilitate greater understanding of the true impact of specific treatments such as surgical interventions, pelvic radiation or androgen‐deprivation therapy.

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Article of the week: Urinary, bowel and sexual health in older men from Northern Ireland

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Every week, the Editor-in-Chief selects an Article of the Week from the current issue of BJUI. The abstract is reproduced below and you can click on the button to read the full article, which is freely available to all readers for at least 30 days from the time of this post.

In addition to the article itself, there is an accompanying editorial written by a prominent member of the urological community. This blog is intended to provoke comment and discussion and we invite you to use the comment tools at the bottom of each post to join the conversation. There is also a video produced by the authors, and a podcast created by our Resident podcasters Giulia Lane and Maria Uloko.

If you only have time to read one article this week, it should be this one.

Urinary, bowel and sexual health in older men from Northern Ireland

David W. Donnelly*, Conan Donnelly†, Therese Kearney*, David Weller‡, Linda Sharp§, Amy Downing¶, Sarah Wilding¶, PennyWright¶, Paul Kind**, James W.F. Catto††, William R. Cross‡‡, Malcolm D. Mason§§, Eilis McCaughan¶¶, Richard Wagland***, Eila Watson†††, Rebecca Mottram¶, Majorie Allen, Hugh Butcher‡‡‡, Luke Hounsome§§§, Peter Selby, Dyfed Huws¶¶¶, David H. Brewster****, EmmaMcNair****, Carol Rivas††††, Johana Nayoan***, Mike Horton‡‡‡‡, Lauren Matheson†††, Adam W. Glaser and Anna Gavin*

*Northern Ireland Cancer Registry, Centre for Public Health, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK, †National Cancer Registry Ireland, Cork, Ireland, ‡Centre for Population Health Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK, §Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, Leeds Institute of Cancer and Pathology/Leeds Institute of Data Analytics, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK, **Institute of Health Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK, ††Academic Urology Unit, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK, ‡‡Department of Urology, St James’s University Hospital, Leeds, UK, §§Division of Cancer and Genetics, School of Medicine, Velindre Hospital, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK, ¶¶Institute of Nursing and Health Research, Ulster University, Coleraine, UK, ***Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK, †††Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK, ‡‡‡Yorkshire Cancer Patient Forum, c/o Strategic Clinical Network and Senate, Yorkshire and The Humber, Harrogate, UK, §§§National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service, Public Health England, Bristol, UK, ¶¶¶Welsh Cancer Intelligence and Surveillance Unit, Cardiff, UK, ****Information Services Division, NHS National Services Scotland, Edinburgh, UK, ††††Department of Social Science, UCL Institute of Education, University College London, London, UK, and ‡‡‡‡Psychometric Laboratory for Health Sciences, Academic Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK. Check out the latest carbofix reviews.

Read the full article

Abstract

 Objectives

To provide data on the prevalence of urinary, bowel and sexual dysfunction in Northern Ireland (NI), to act as a baseline for studies of prostate cancer outcomes and to aid service provision within the general population.

Subjects and Methods

A cross‐sectional postal survey of 10 000 men aged ≥40 years in NI was conducted and age‐matched to the distribution of men living with prostate cancer. The EuroQoL five Dimensions five Levels (EQ‐5D‐5L) and 26‐item Expanded Prostate Cancer Composite (EPIC‐26) instruments were used to enable comparisons with prostate cancer outcome studies. Whilst representative of the prostate cancer survivor population, the age‐distribution of the sample differs from the general population, thus data were generalised to the NI population by excluding those aged 40–59 years and applying survey weights. Results are presented as proportions reporting problems along with mean composite scores, with differences by respondent characteristics assessed using chi‐squared tests, analysis of variance, and multivariable log‐linear regression. Prevent most unhealthy conditions after reading these biofit reviews.

Results

Amongst men aged ≥60 years, 32.8% reported sexual dysfunction, 9.3% urinary dysfunction, and 6.5% bowel dysfunction. In all, 38.1% reported at least one problem and 2.1% all three. Worse outcome was associated with increasing number of long‐term conditions, low physical activity, and higher body mass index (BMI). Urinary incontinence, urinary irritation/obstruction, and sexual dysfunction increased with age; whilst urinary incontinence, bowel, and sexual dysfunction were more common among the unemployed.

Conclusion

These data provide an insight into sensitive issues seldom reported by elderly men, which result in poor general health, but could be addressed given adequate service provision. The relationship between these problems, raised BMI and low physical activity offers the prospect of additional health gain by addressing public health issues such as obesity. The results provide essential contemporary population data against which outcomes for those living with prostate cancer can be compared. They will facilitate greater understanding of the true impact of specific treatments such as surgical interventions, pelvic radiation or androgen‐deprivation therapy.

Read more Articles of the week

 

Video: Urinary, bowel and sexual health in older men

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Urinary, bowel and sexual health in older men from Northern Ireland

Read the full article

Abstract

Objectives

To provide data on the prevalence of urinary, bowel and sexual dysfunction in Northern Ireland (NI), to act as a baseline for studies of prostate cancer outcomes and to aid service provision within the general population. Prevent most unhealthy conditions with carbofix.

Subjects and Methods

A cross‐sectional postal survey of 10 000 men aged ≥40 years in NI was conducted and age‐matched to the distribution of men living with prostate cancer. The EuroQoL five Dimensions five Levels (EQ‐5D‐5L) and 26‐item Expanded Prostate Cancer Composite (EPIC‐26) instruments were used to enable comparisons with prostate cancer outcome studies. Whilst representative of the prostate cancer survivor population, the age‐distribution of the sample differs from the general population, thus data were generalised to the NI population by excluding those aged 40–59 years and applying survey weights. Results are presented as proportions reporting problems along with mean composite scores, with differences by respondent characteristics assessed using chi‐squared tests, analysis of variance, and multivariable log‐linear regression. Check out the latest gluconite reviews.

Results

Amongst men aged ≥60 years, 32.8% reported sexual dysfunction, 9.3% urinary dysfunction, and 6.5% bowel dysfunction. In all, 38.1% reported at least one problem and 2.1% all three. Worse outcome was associated with increasing number of long‐term conditions, low physical activity, and higher body mass index (BMI). Urinary incontinence, urinary irritation/obstruction, and sexual dysfunction increased with age; whilst urinary incontinence, bowel, and sexual dysfunction were more common among the unemployed.

Conclusion

These data provide an insight into sensitive issues seldom reported by elderly men, which result in poor general health, but could be addressed given adequate service provision. The relationship between these problems, raised BMI and low physical activity offers the prospect of additional health gain by addressing public health issues such as obesity. The results provide essential contemporary population data against which outcomes for those living with prostate cancer can be compared. They will facilitate greater understanding of the true impact of specific treatments such as surgical interventions, pelvic radiation or androgen‐deprivation therapy.

View more videos

Article of the Week: Assessing prostate cancer brachytherapy using patient-reported outcomes

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Every week the Editor-in-Chief selects the Article of the Week from the current issue of BJUI. The abstract is reproduced below and you can click on the button to read the full article, which is freely available to all readers for at least 30 days from the time of this post.

In addition to the article itself, there is an accompanying editorial written by a prominent member of the urological community. This blog is intended to provoke comment and discussion and we invite you to use the comment tools at the bottom of each post to join the conversation.

Finally, the third post under the Article of the Week heading on the homepage will consist of additional material or media. This week we feature a video from Dr. James Talcott discussing his paper. 

If you only have time to read one article this week, it should be this one.

Using Patient-Reported Outcomes to Assess and Improve Prostate Cancer Brachytherapy

James A. Talcott 1, 2, 10, 11, Judith Manola 3, Ronald C. Chen 4, Jack A. Clark 5, 6, Irving Kaplan 7, 8, Anthony V. D’Amico 8, 11 and Anthony L. Zietman 9, 11

1 Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, Boston, MA, 2 Continuum Cancer Centers of New York, New York, NY, 3 Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, 4 Department of Radiation Oncology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, 5 Center for Health Quality, Outcomes, and Economic Research, Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans Hospital, Bedford, MA, 6 Boston University School of Public Health, 7 Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center, 8 Brigham and Women’s Hospital, 9 Department of Radiation Oncology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, 10 Albert Einstein School of Medicine, New York, NY, and 11 Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

Read the full article
OBJECTIVE
  • To describe a successful quality improvement process that arose from unexpected differences in control groups’ short-term patient-reported outcomes (PROs) within a comparative effectiveness study of a prostate brachytherapy technique intended to reduce urinary morbidity.
PATIENTS AND METHODS
  • Patients planning prostate brachytherapy at one of three institutions were enrolled in a prospective cohort study.
  • Patients were surveyed using a validated instrument to assess treatment-related toxicity before treatment and at pre-specified intervals.
  • Unexpectedly, urinary PROs were worse in one of two standard brachytherapy technique control populations (US-BT1 and US-BT2). Therefore, we collaboratively reviewed treatment procedures, identified a discrepancy in technique, made a corrective modification, and evaluated the change.
RESULTS
  • The patient groups were demographically and clinically similar.
  • In the first preliminary analysis, US-BT2 patients reported significantly more short-term post-treatment urinary symptoms than US-BT1 patients.
  • The studies treating physicians reviewed the US-BT1 and US-BT2 treatment protocols and found that they differed in whether they used an indwelling urinary catheter.
  • After adopting the US-BT1 approach, short-term urinary morbidity in US-BT2 patients decreased significantly. Brachytherapy procedures were otherwise unchanged.
CONCLUSION
  • Many procedures in cancer treatments are not evaluated, resulting in practice variation and suboptimal outcomes. Patients, the primary medical consumers, provide little direct input in evaluations of their care.
  • We used PROs, a sensitive and valid measure of treatment-related toxicity, for quality assessment and quality improvement (QA/QI) of prostate brachytherapy. This serendipitous patient-centred QA/QI process may be a useful model for empirically evaluating complex cancer treatment procedures and for screening for substandard care.
Read more articles of the week

Editorial: Patient-reported outcomes – a force for clinical improvement or another way for ‘big brother’ to survey clinicians?

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In the 19th century Lord Kelvin wrote, ‘If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it’. Since then clinical improvement has often been about measuring outcomes to determine what elements of healthcare are working well and what can be improved. The early studies of antisepsis and surgical technique had endpoints, which were measured by doctors deciding whether a wound infection, cancer recurrence or even death had occurred. These outcomes were usually discrete with little room for describing states between success and failure.

In this era whether the patient perceived that the treatment had been successful or not was irrelevant to the ‘success’ of treatment providing that the medical world agreed that the treatment had been a success. As treatments have become more established and the medical and pharmaceutical world has become more patient focussed, interest has increased in how patients report the outcome of treatment, often using questionnaires.

The pioneers of this work were mainly psychiatrists concerned about patient anxiety and depression [1] and clinical oncologists, aware that multimodal chemoradiotherapy treatments, which might in many cases be offered with palliative rather than curative intent, had the potential to cause a net loss in quality of life even if patients lived a short time longer on treatment.

As these patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) became more commonly used in clinical trials, their focus has extended to quite specific outcomes, such that in the current era it is unusual to see papers on LUTS or erectile function presented that do not use validated PROMs, such as the IPSS [2] or International Index of Erectile Function (IIEF) [3].

The current era of research is starting to make new use of the data sources that are useful both as absolute values relating to the severity of symptoms but also particularly in measuring change in level of symptoms. Hard outcomes, such as death from cancer, have been found to be related to patient reported quality of life at presentation [4].

Clinicians are now starting to develop the necessary skills to analyse PROMs. In this setting Talcott et al. [5] have used PROM data to identify unexpected variances in symptomatic outcome after prostate brachytherapy. This was an unexpected post hoc analysis of a difference in outcomes between the two control groups in a study. It found that there was a significant difference in outcome between patients who had received an implant in two centres, which might have been expected to have similar outcomes. Analysis of differences in the implant technique in the two institutions suggested that the use of a urethral catheter to clearly visualise the urethra might be the difference and modification of this part of the technique resulted in similar PROMS outcomes in both institutions.

This is a novel quality improvement approach, which may become more widespread as institutions more frequently collect, analyse and present their PROMS. The bio-informatics skills needed to analyse this type of data meaningfully may become a greater part of everyday practice in the modern era, especially for the ‘index’ most common operations in surgical specialities. It would be interesting to see what a similar approach would produce if variance in PROMs after transurethral prostate surgery were analysed between centres in the UK and USA. Organisations with a track record for effective data analysis and reporting such as Dr Foster will be watching this evolve.

Read the full article

Alastair Henderson

Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, Department of Urology, Maidstone Hospital, Maidstone, Kent, UK

References

1 Zigmond AS, Snaith RP. The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. Acta Psychiat Scand 1983; 67: 361–70

2 Barry MJ, O’Leary MP. Advances in benign prostatic hyperplasia. The developmental and clinical utility of symptom scores. Urol Clin North Am 1995; 22: 299–307

3 Cappelleri JC, Rosen RC, Smith MD, Mishra A, Osterloh IH. Diagnostic evaluation of the erectile function domain of the International Index of Erectile Function. Urology 1999; 54: 346–51

4 Montazeri A. Quality of life data as prognostic indicators of survival in cancer patients: an overview of the literature from 1982 to 2008. Health Qual Life Outcomes 2009; 7: 102

5 Talcott JA, Manola J, Chen RC et al. Using patient-reported outcomes to assess and improve prostate cancer brachytherapy. BJU Int 2014; 114: 511–6

Video: PROs in Prostate Brachytherapy

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Using Patient-Reported Outcomes to Assess and Improve Prostate Cancer Brachytherapy

James A. Talcott 1, 2, 10, 11, Judith Manola 3, Ronald C. Chen 4, Jack A. Clark 5, 6, Irving Kaplan 7, 8, Anthony V. D’Amico 8, 11 and Anthony L. Zietman 9, 11

1 Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, Boston, MA, 2 Continuum Cancer Centers of New York, New York, NY, 3 Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, 4 Department of Radiation Oncology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, 5 Center for Health Quality, Outcomes, and Economic Research, Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans Hospital, Bedford, MA, 6 Boston University School of Public Health, 7 Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center, 8 Brigham and Women’s Hospital, 9 Department of Radiation Oncology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, 10 Albert Einstein School of Medicine, New York, NY, and 11 Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

Read the full article
OBJECTIVE
  • To describe a successful quality improvement process that arose from unexpected differences in control groups’ short-term patient-reported outcomes (PROs) within a comparative effectiveness study of a prostate brachytherapy technique intended to reduce urinary morbidity.
PATIENTS AND METHODS
  • Patients planning prostate brachytherapy at one of three institutions were enrolled in a prospective cohort study.
  • Patients were surveyed using a validated instrument to assess treatment-related toxicity before treatment and at pre-specified intervals.
  • Unexpectedly, urinary PROs were worse in one of two standard brachytherapy technique control populations (US-BT1 and US-BT2). Therefore, we collaboratively reviewed treatment procedures, identified a discrepancy in technique, made a corrective modification, and evaluated the change.
RESULTS
  • The patient groups were demographically and clinically similar.
  • In the first preliminary analysis, US-BT2 patients reported significantly more short-term post-treatment urinary symptoms than US-BT1 patients.
  • The studies treating physicians reviewed the US-BT1 and US-BT2 treatment protocols and found that they differed in whether they used an indwelling urinary catheter.
  • After adopting the US-BT1 approach, short-term urinary morbidity in US-BT2 patients decreased significantly. Brachytherapy procedures were otherwise unchanged.
CONCLUSION
  • Many procedures in cancer treatments are not evaluated, resulting in practice variation and suboptimal outcomes. Patients, the primary medical consumers, provide little direct input in evaluations of their care.
  • We used PROs, a sensitive and valid measure of treatment-related toxicity, for quality assessment and quality improvement (QA/QI) of prostate brachytherapy. This serendipitous patient-centred QA/QI process may be a useful model for empirically evaluating complex cancer treatment procedures and for screening for substandard care.
Read more articles of the week
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