A new questionnaire called the Overactive Bladder-Bladder Assessment Tool (OAB-BAT) is a valid and reliable way to assess patient-reported outcomes (PROs), investigators concluded.
The OAB-BAT, which was developed by an international OAB advisory board, measures symptoms, impacts, bother, and treatment satisfaction in a single instrument.
The traditional bladder diary suffers from inaccurate completion and a bladder self-monitoring effect and does not capture the level of symptom bother or impact on health-related quality of life (HRQoL), according to investigators. “Once validated, the resulting OAB-BAT v3.0 is intended to complement the use of a bladder diary and potentially replace other PROsin both clinical studies and practice,” Christopher Chapple, MD, of The Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield, United Kingdom, and colleagues stated in European Urology Focus.
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The investigators tested OAB-BAT v2.0 comprising 17 questions, including 4 on symptoms, 4 on bother, 6 on HRQoL, and 3 on treatment satisfaction. Scores ranged from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating worse OAB bother. The OAB-BAT asks respondents to reflect on their symptoms over the last 7 days.
In the study, 170 patients (72.4% female; mean age 59 years) from 6 US urology clinics completed the OAB-BAT weekly over 28 days along with these other OAB instruments: bladder diary, Patient Perception of Bladder Condition (PPBC), 33-item OAB questionnaire (OAB-q), OAB satisfaction questionnaire, and the patient global impression of severity and change. At baseline, patients had OAB symptoms lasting at least 3 months, grade 8 or higher on the OAB-V8 Symptom Bother Scale, and at least 8 micturitions daily (excluding incontinence episodes). Approximately 84% of respondents rated their bladder/urinary problems as moderate to severe. More than one-third (34.1%) reported urinary incontinence. As many as 68.2% had not yet received treatment.
The OAB-BAT v3.0 score demonstrated moderate to large effects in relation to bladder diary summaries, especially micturition reports, according to the investigators. Scores on 8 questions on the OAB-BAT addressing symptom bother and HRQoL correlated highly with established tools such as the OAB-q and PPBC. However, responses to OAB-BAT questions on symptoms and treatment were less telling.
“The eight-item OAB-BAT v3.0 is a psychometrically sound measure for determining OAB patients’ perspectives on symptom bother and the impacts of their condition,” Dr Chapple’s team wrote. “A short, comprehensive, validated tool such as OAB-BAT v3.0 may prove useful in remote monitoring of patients, as part of an electronic health record, and/or as an assessment in clinical studies.”
Disclosure: This study was supported by Astellas, Inc. Please see the original reference for a full list of authors’ disclosures.
Reference
Chapple C, Kelleher C, Siddiqui E, et al. Validation of the overactive bladder-bladder assessment tool (OAB-BAT): a potential alternative to the standard bladder diary for Monitoring OAB Outcomes. Eur Urol Focus. 2021 Jan 12;S2405-4569(20)30300-X. doi:10.1016/j.euf.2020.12.001
